Zille faces expulsion from DA over colonialism tweets as probe looms

Helen Zille’s days in the DA seem to be numbered as the probe into her comments on colonialism starts on Saturday.

Senior party leaders, who spoke to Business Day, said her latest social media comments and subsequent writings about them had placed her on a collision course with the party and she would face the harshest possible sanction: expulsion.

Zille’s perceived defiance after her successor, Mmusi Maimane, censured her for the tweets pits the current and former leaders against each other.

Maimane faces the challenge of sanctioning Zille, a key ally in his rise to power.

DA federal executive chairman James Selfe confirmed Zille would meet the party’s federal legal commission (FLC), which deals with disciplinary matters, on Saturday.

FLC chairwoman Glynnis Breytenbach said: “When the investigation is done, we will send a report to the federal executive. They will take a decision on whether or not she should be charged.

“If they decide she should be charged, they will send it back to the federal commission [to decide on a sanction],” Breytenbach said.

If the FLC is given the go-ahead, it will make a finding and recommend a sanction against her to the federal executive committee for ratification.

The meeting expected to grapple with that final decision is likely to take place at the end of April. “The party has always been built on institutions, that is why no one individual has the right to stand up and say that one must be moved so that we can build the institutional capacity to investigate,” Maimane said.

“Equally so, no one individual is bigger than the organisation, because the organisation is made up of South Africans who are from different walks of life, subjecting themselves to the same values and the same institutional capacity,” he said.

Zille’s term as Western Cape premier ends in 2019. She subsequently apologised, but then went on to pen a lengthy justification of her comments in the Daily Maverick in which she ostensibly compared the DA to the ANC. This had been the final straw, said a source, who wished to remain anonymous.

“She was told it was wrong, she apologises, then writes a piece about how she was correct and when questioned, says she is going to write even more about it. That cannot be correct,” said a party insider.

Zille said on Wednesday she did not want to pre-empt the FLC process.