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policy. One, which is less significant from the Party perspective, is the oppositionfrom those outside the tripartite alliance. This strand of opposition includes, but isnot limited to, the parliamentary opposition, which is led by the DemocraticAlliance (DA), a right-of-centre political assemblage of traditionally-white, middleclass opposition to the ANC. It can, however, “trace its lineage through a liberaltradition of parliamentary opposition to apartheid”. 416 One of its progenitors, theLiberal Party of South Africa, was headed by the esteemed politician, HelenSuzman.In August 2007, the DA leader, Tony Leon, lamented the loss of South Africa’s‘reputation as an international moral beacon’. 417 This was evident, he claimed, inSouth Africa’s ‘misplaced solidarity’ with governments such as those of Cuba andIraq; and also in the South African government’s unhappy record on Zimbabwe.However, by this time, the ANC, and Thabo Mbeki in particular, had become quiteimpervious to the criticisms of the media and the parliamentary opposition.Contrast this with a time, at the height of the Abacha crisis in Nigeria underMandela, when the government switched policy to take a tougher line against theAbacha regime. Black noted,With domestic critics decrying the apparent naivety and ineffectiveness of its quietdiplomacy, South Africa’s government now became an international hard-liner in thecall for stern punitive measures against the Nigerian regime. 418The second source of opposition emanates from within the tripartite alliance. Whilethis opposition reached its apex on the Zimbabwe issue, its effects were minimal, asthey did not threaten the alliance in any significant sense. COSATU has remained amember of the alliance and as noted earlier, the ANC performed even better insubsequent elections. In direct contravention of government’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ onZimbabwe, COSATU staged a ‘fact-finding’ mission to Zimbabwe in 2004. The416 Tom Lodge and Ursula Scheidegger, “Political Parties and Democratic Governancein South Africa”, Electoral Institute of South Africa Research Report, No.25, AucklandPark (2006): xi.417 Business Day, 22 August 2007, “Leon Pleads for SA’s Moral Compass’, accessedonline at: http://allafrica.com/stories/200708220278.html418 Black, “South Africa confronts Abacha’s Nigeria”, 41.176