MADIKIZELA AMBUSHED WITH A PSEUDO SURVEY AGAINST PREMIERSHIP OF THE WESTERN CAPE

A FEW months ago, at the height of the irrational pursuit to rid the City of Patricia de Lille as mayor, some details leaked from a federal executive meeting of the DA.

The leaks clearly stated that De Lille had to go to make way for Bonginkosi Madikizela, the current leader of the DA in the province.

It emerged from that meeting that the DA had commissioned a survey by an independent body on both Madikizela and Alan Winde’s chances to win the provincial electoral vote. The survey came back negative for Madikizela (in that the DA could lose power in the province if they put him up as the face of the party’s premiership campaign) and slightly above 50% for Alan Winde. Since this survey was deemed independent, Bonginkosi had no choice but to accept it.

It was apparent the DA did not really have a De Lille problem but a Madikizela problem. Madikizela was the rightful heir to the premiership, but was deemed unsellable.

The next best position was mayor of Cape Town. This would clearly be acceptable to Madikizela because Cape Town is the centre of power in the Western Cape. This would also be safe for the DA because the mayorship is not up for election at least until 2021.

Bonginkosi has been an MEC since 2009, it’s unlikely he still has an appetite to remain an MEC. His valiant fight to be leader of the DA in the province can’t have been done for altruistic reasons, but with the hope to rise from MEC to premier.

Pushing De Lille out to make way for Madikizela was then a way to save both party and provincial government. However, the way the DA handled the De Lille exit and the leak of Madikizela as her replacement left a bitter public taste and that project was abandoned. De Lille herself went public to lament this Madikizela project which led to terrorising her for no apparent reason.

Choosing Alan Winde seems to solve the potential loss of electoral victory in the province but does not solve the Madikizela problem. What makes the problem even more complicated is that Madikizela has shown great loyalty to the party, especially the white cabal over and against fellow black party leaders.

When Mbali Ntuli, former DA youth leader in KZN, MPL in the KZN legislature and overall vibrant young leader, liked a Facebook post which criticised Helen Zille, it was Madikizela who laid a charge against her with the federal executive. When Helen Zille made offensive colonial tweets, Madikizela did nothing.

When De Lille resigned as leader of the DA in the province, clearly pushed over the edge, Madikizela, then De Lille’s deputy, was only too happy to jump into her post without ever questioning this treatment of De Lille or black women. Madikizela has been subservient and complicit to all white abuses of black leaders and this should have come with the reward of premiership.

What is clear however is that the Western Cape is the last stronghold of the DA’s old white cabal and if they were to finally have a black leader, or make the premiership post democratic within the party, there would never be another white leader ever again.

When the province was on the verge of running out of water, Winde defended farmers’ ownership of private dams and keeping water supply only for themselves. The City was facing Armageddon and farmers could bring the required relief to the province by releasing some of their water reserves to save humanity and Alan Winde was on the side of the farmers.

It is the farmers themselves who ultimately saw the light and released thousands of kilolitres for the people and Day Zero was avoided.

The people, the poor, the farmworkers and black people, are not on Alan’s radar. He will always be on the side of owners of means of production, largely and mostly white and the rest of us be damned.

As the ANC we cannot allow him to win. We cannot allow the DA to return to power. It would be a sad day for the people.