‘One by one DA squeezing out ID’
OVER the years, one by one MPs, MPLs and councillors who joined the DA from the Independent Democrats (ID), have been squeezed out. Mayor Patricia de Lille’s fate will rank as a test of what’s going on behind the scenes in the DA.
So said Keith Gottschalk, former head of political studies at UWC, after De Lille and mayoral committee member for safety, security and social services JP Smith were informed they would not be allowed to attend this weekend’s DA’s provincial congress to elect a new leadership.
Smith will be running for one of the three deputy chairperson positions at the congress.
The pair were placed on special leave from all DA activities in the Cape Town Metro, after Smith questioned the shutdown by De Lille of the City’s special investigating unit headed by him.
De Lille had moved to clip the wings of the unit, saying it was usurping the work of the police and was probing councillors.
But Smith charged in a letter to DA leader Mmusi Maimane, leaked to certain media, that De Lille wanted to see the back of the unit because it was about to expose her upgrading of security and private building work at her home at the state’s expense.
However, the City’s Speaker, Dirk Smit, on Sunday dismissed these claims, saying that security upgrades at the house were required by the police and were properly paid for by the state, but that De Lille had paid for the non-security renovations herself.
De Lille slammed Smith, accusing him of wanting to play “cowboys and crooks” and for besmirching her name, threatening to sue him for defamation.
She also warned DA leaders to stay out of the fight, because of the separation of powers between the government and the party.
“Such publicised fractiousness will hurt the DA as much as ANC factionalist clashes hurts them,” Gottschalk said.
But the ANC could only benefit if there was a huge split in the DA.
“So far, there are no signs of this,” Gottschalk said. “Less than six months ago, I heard it on good authority that once Helen Zille retires, Patricia de Lille intends to stand for the premier’s post.
“This sort of publicity, being placed on ‘special leave’, does not help. Such special leave also implies Maimane is wary or weary of both of them.”
Yesterday, DA provincial spokesperson Siyabonga Sesant said those who could not attend the congress could apply for a special early vote to be carried out on Saturday morning.
Smith said yesterday the public spat could affect his campaign to secure a deputy chairperson position.
“We will have to see how the branch members feel. When we campaigned in the metro’s regional election campaign a few weeks ago, we emphasised that power and prominence needed to be returned to branch structures as the primary building blocks of the party.
“The branches hold the majority power and will decide who they want as leadership,” Smith said.
In a statement, Smit accused members of the ANC of “reckless actions” after they visited De Lille’s Pinelands home.
“As a result… the safety at the mayor’s house has been jeopardised with information and videos of her home being distributed to the public via various media channels,” Smit said. He added that he would now have to deploy the city’s VIP protection services to the mayor’s house 24 hours a day.
Smit said he would report this to the police, who will have to reassess the mayor’s house, and the council will have to change safety measures there because these measures have been compromised.
THE latest public spat between the DA’s Patricia de Lille and JP Smith and their subsequent suspension does not augur well for residents of Cape Town.
That Smith is a loose cannon is not in dispute and perhaps national government ought to take over the running of the city council to investigate the role Smith played with the myriad of parallel units operating in opposition to the SAPS.
Given the “intelligence gathering capacity” of some of these units, I consulted the constitution which is quite specific on this matter: s209(1) states, “any intelligence service, other than any intelligence division of the defence force or police service, may be established only by the president, as head of the national executive, and only in terms of national legislation”.
Clearly, these parallel units established by the city council are operating illegally and in breach of our constitution.
The sooner the metro police is taken over by the SAPS in terms of the white paper on policing; the sooner we will get rid of the rot at the Civic Centre.
This will free up the rest of the law enforcement members to focus on the enforcing of existing by-laws like loitering and other petty crimes.
The city council’s Special Investigating Unit (SIU) is unconstitutional and must be disbanded immediately as the city council does not have any investigative capacity whatsoever.
It is not part of their core mandate and the DA administration must stop operating as if it is in control of a separatist federal state.
This latest DA debacle also holds sinister similarities to Premier Helen Zille’s “spook scandal” where ex-cop Paul Scheepers was used to conduct covert activities in the provincial legislature.
Residents will have to be content with watching the DA fight among themselves while there is gang anarchy on the Cape Flats and people being denied access to their human rights. Colin Arendse Wynberg