Patricia de Lille: I will sue DA
D-DAY: PARTY EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE HER FATE ON MONDAY
Mayor says she is the target of an orchestrated smear campaign.
Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille has vowed to sue members of her party for defamation. This as the Democratic Alliance (DA) is expected to announce by Monday whether or not they will fire De Lille, after months of back and forth public accusations, including an entire page of the party’s website dedicated to justifying the DA’s bid to remove her.
Speaking to Saturday Citizen this week, De Lille ripped into her fellow politicians in the party’s federal executive, and councillors in Cape Town.
She fingered deputy caucus leader JP Smith as having orchestrated a smear campaign against her, promising councillors jobs in return for voting in the internal motion of no confidence against her last month.
“I have got a lot of legal recourse. I will sue the hell out of them.
“It’s still coming,” she said, saying her name had been dragged through the mud over the past few months.
The embattled mayor’s woes began when the party filed criminal charges against her, accusing her of soliciting a bribe from businessperson Anthony Foul.
De Lille claimed that two DA councillors had been promised positions in exchange for voting her out.
“Angus McKenzie, the son of Patrick McKenzie from the old National Party, is exactly like his father. They were promised positions because all of the people that I have appointed must go. The reason why some of them voted for this motion is not because they supported it, it’s because they were promised positions.”
Former DA MP Juanita Terblanche has called out De Lille for playing the race card, saying she was also treated unfairly by the DA when she went through her own disciplinary process.
De Lille had claimed the treatment Terblanche received during her own battles within the party proved that white members got treated with kid gloves, while facing similar, or more serious allegations.
Terblanche said she was charged for misconduct for making an expense claim for make-up during the party’s 2014 election campaign trail.