De Lille’s exit leaves the DA wobbly and liable to vote losses
After 17 months of wrangling, Patricia de Lille has finally resigned as mayor of Cape Town, just six months before the next general election.
The imbroglio has introduced three — perhaps more — significant questions into SA’s politics: what does the dispute say about the leadership of Mmusi Maimane; will the battle with De Lille cost the DA an absolute majority in the Western Cape; and what does the break-up say about the DA’s ability to run coalition governments?
I have some sympathy with Maimane’s predicament regarding De Lille. When the fracas first broke out it wasn’t absolutely clear to Maimane, or anyone else for that matter, whether she had committed an offence so grotesque that it was worth risking a flaming battle. I imagine he wondered whether the claims against her were propounded by the inevitable factions that seemingly crop up like so many mushrooms in politics.
As it turns out, there were sufficient grounds, since it now transpires that De Lille most probably tried to jury-rig the appointment of a senior official in the government, which is not only unethical but technically illegal.
She has denied the charges, but since the suggestion was SMSed from her phone, the case is pretty open and shut — politically, if not legally, speaking.
This doesn’t get Maimane off the hook, however. Having taken the decision to oust her, his leadership on the issue was simply absent and the management of the ousting was appalling. First, the party tried this charge, then another, then there was going to be a “party solution”, then a “government solution”.
As we all know, it was tortuous. If you are going to take on a political operator like De Lille, then the apt analogy would be buffalo hunting; you have to shoot quickly, you have to shoot heavy and you have to shoot straight. The DA’s political opponents will label Maimane “weak”, and in a sense they would be right. But more importantly, it’s clear that the management of the party needs a thorough shake-up.
As for the consequences in the Western Cape, they might be dire. The Independent Democrats were never much of a political force: the party got 1.7% of the vote in 2004 and 0.9% in 2009. But the DA got 59% of the vote in 2014 in the Western Cape, so it really does not have much of a margin to play with.
De Lille is more of a political figure now than she was then, and it’s not inconceivable that she could get 5% of the vote in the Western Cape.
This is especially so if she is supported, as she is sure to be, by the ANC, which used the same strategy to whiteant the IFP’s support in KwaZulu-Natal.
The counterargument is that the DA won most of the seats in the Western Cape with about two-thirds of the vote on average, so it’s more likely that it will hold the province. Yet there is no doubt that the province is now in play, and that was not the case 17 months ago.
The question of coalition politics is also intriguing. Effectively, the DA was in a coalition with De Lille, since she did not come from its ranks. The DA’s fragile coalition in Port Elizabeth has spectacularly imploded and its coalition in Pretoria is teetering. For a party that presents itself as the party of efficient governing in the name of the people, its record is starting to look wobbly.
It’s worth noting that in no election since democracy has the DA gone backwards. If it does in this election, the fallout could be brutal.
NOW MIDDLE-CLASS VOTERS, BLACK AND WHITE, ARE HOPING THE ANC WILL SUCCEED AND MAY VOTE FOR IT TO AVOID THE EFF DICTATING POLICY
There is one other strange problem for the DA, I suspect: South Africans are just desperate for hope. Great swathes of the middle class are willing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government to succeed. It’s a rather strange replay of late 1980s, when English-speaking whites were divided about voting for the opposition because they might inadvertently allow the Conservative Party to sneak in by splitting the vote.
Now middle-class voters, black and white, are hoping against hope that the ANC will succeed and may vote for the party to avoid the risk of the EFF grabbing the balance of power and dictating policy.
In some ways, the fact that the DA is having so many problems is one of expectations. We are now so inured to catastrophes in the ANC that they have become normalised. Something like the VBS scandal would bring most governments around the world crashing down. But because the DA is perceived as holding itself to a higher standard, the disappointment is somehow greater.
It’s unfair, but that is politics for you.
● Cohen is Business Day senior editor.