DA shouldn’t be throwing stones

The Democratic Alliance often characterises the ANC’s leadership as chaotic – but lately the great liberal hope party is going through a bit of tawdry name calling itself. The latest incident to tarnish the DA’s view of itself is the unseemly public squabble between Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille and JP Smith, the city councilor who is on the mayor’s committee for safety and security.

This week, De Lille was reported as saying she had gone to her lawyers about “defamatory” remarks made about her by Smith. These remarks related to work done for security reasons on the mayor’s private residence in the city, and for which the municipality paid.

Smith and members of the municipality’s special investigating unit apparently believed some of the security upgrades were not justified, leading to comments that the saga could develop into a “DA Nkandla”.

Whatever the truth of the case – and this will have to be decided by the municipality and the DA – it is apparent that the DA has serious internal issues and strife to deal with.

Recently, there was controversy over former leader Helen Zille’s penchant for rapid-fire tweets which are open to interpretation, while the divisions within the DA in the Western Cape go much deeper than the current De Lille-Smith spat.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane has his work cut out in ensuring that party discipline is maintained while continuing to show his party occupies the moral high ground in South African politics. Neither goal is going to be easy to achieve.

In a way, it is good to see the DA has feet of clay and it is just as susceptible to internal plotting as any other party. Yet, the party should never forget that, before it starts throwing stones, it dwells in its own political glass house.