But the @Our_DA isn't in national government. And petulant tone of the article aside, you need to listen to voters about WHY that is.

A lot of 'whats ifs' with a throwback to the DA of 20 years ago, without substance as to HOW they'd have succeeded where the ANC has failed. https://twitter.com/GvanOnselen/status/1354297800981405701

"The DA... has its share of incompetents. All parties do. This is tolerable if they generally value expertise in government."

I'm wondering what expertise that is exactly?

The expertise of those who advocate the Sweden method?

Or the expertise of those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the "no more than 10 000 people will die, we don't need a vaccine" school of thought?

Or the "let the virus run its course" expertise perhaps?

From the article, one of Gareth's gripes appears to be with voters who "want to damn the ANC, using the ANC as a point of reference. So that our political universe remains insular and uniform, and we only ever really have one option."

Well, chap, if voters do feel as if they "ever really only have one option", I'd suggest it's as much a poor reflection on the opposition as it is our - how do you phrase it? - being "invested in this game of false moral equivalence..."

Full disclosure: I purchased a subscription to the Business Day for the sole purpose of reading the piece in its entirety, so as to do due diligence in understanding what it is Gareth had to say.

I can't say wholeheartedly that it was money well spent.

Towards the end, he says again: "... if you live in the real world, you would have to concede this too: [the DA] would have delivered vaccines".

But having read it over several times, I remain without an understanding as to how it would have done so?

I find myself wondering if Gareth's claim that the "DA, however imperfectly, values excellence & merit" would have been the difference?

And similarly, whether the values of "excellence & merit" would be used to measure the worthiness of potential vaccine recipients?

I suppose I could ask the Western Cape's disenfranchised and vulnerable for comment.

Related: do you think the manner in which they were evicted during hard lockdown makes the list when it comes to the "DA’s long-standing & exceptional performance"?

The issue with the piece is that there is no information provided to substantiate the claims Gareth makes about the DA's potential success, beyond the sentence: "It would have planned ahead, budgeted properly, communicated effectively & been generally outcomes-orientated...".

But in light of the previously-mentioned conspiracies to which many of the DA's leadership have clung throughout the course of the pandemic, I must admit that I find such a claim almost impossible to believe.

His closing lines deliver a metaphorical "fuck you" to voters who allegedly REFUSE to put the DA into national government (when they're just so darn perfect!):

"... if that is a choice too difficult to make, well, you are then master of your own destructive circumstance."

Using the whining, tone-deaf & confrontational manner, typical to the DA, as Gareth concedes (but without showing understanding as to why DA falls short as a viable option for voters), they appear to remain beyond reproach.

If they have the substance & solutions, as Gareth suggests they do, "you would think the very least we could do is articulate" it.

You'd also think they'd forgo partisan allegiance for the good of the people, particularly since "... lives themselves [are] on the table."

But I guess, as a result of our "false moral equivalence" and commitment to serving as the masters of our own "destructive circumstance", in the eyes of the DA - we simply don't deserve it. Not from them anyway.