Poll prompts sweet tweet

MY Tweet of the Week goes to Athol Trollip – @AtholT – for: “It is a great honour and privilege to be endorsed by former EC Premier and DA MP Nosimo Balindlela.”

PROFILE

Trollip is the leader of the DA in the Eastern Cape and the official opposition in the Eastern Cape legislature, a position he has held, on and off, since 2002. He ran for the position of DA federal leader in 2007, but lost to Helen Zille.

In 2009 he was elected parliamentary leader before losing a midterm election to Lindiwe Mazibuko in 2011. He has 235 followers on Twitter.

CITATION

Trollip once said of Twitter, “I’m not okay with tweeting, I don’t have time to tweet.”

His diary has obviously opened up recently. Conveniently, he seems to have found the requisite space just before the DA’s May federal congress, in which he is standing for the position of federal chairperson, as his very first tweet on March 29 makes clear.

Since then, he has used the account almost exclusively to promote his campaign and that of the person in which he has invested much political capital, Mmusi Maimane.

When Trollip lost the parliamentary leadership race to Lindiwe Mazibuko he was critical of the “external” nature of Mazibuko’s campaign. “The fact that the leadership [contest] has been a public one – that’s what surprised me, as it’s usually an internal [process],” he said. “My campaign is an internal party [campaign]. I’m conducting my campaign internally. I’m not running my campaign in the media.”

That didn’t work out too well for him.

In something of an implicit admission that he got that badly wrong, he has now wholeheartedly embraced external campaigning. He has a Facebook page too, used in pretty much the same fashion and launched just as recently.

That is no bad thing. It is healthy for the public to see what its representatives stand for and the issues on which they campaign. So his aboutturn should be welcomed.

A key part of any such campaign is endorsements, and this week Trollip proudly displayed one such recommendation to the party from Nosimo Balindlela, the former Eastern Cape ANC premier (2004-08), then Congress of the People member (2008-12) and now one of the DA faithful.

In the endorsement, Balindela says: “Athol lives the values of putting people first as espoused by ‘Ubuntu’ and ‘Batho Pele’.”

Trollip describes it as an honour and privilege to be endorsed by the former Eastern Cape premier. On Facebook he said he was “greatly humbled and honoured” by the gesture.

But Trollip has not always thought so highly of the premier. For years he served opposite her in the Eastern Cape legislature, as the leader of the official opposition, and over that period he had some choice things to say about her and her performance.

Soon after Balindlela’s election, Trollip wrote in the Daily Dispatch, on November 30 2005: “I must sadly say, my response to her [Balindlela’s] departmental annual report is devoid of praise. Her department should be setting the example of service excellence, unqualified accountability and proper administration. It isn’t.”

On December 5 that same year, in The Herald, Trollip bemoaned Balindlela’s lack of commitment in fighting corruption. He said the premier had promised “a declaration of war” on corruption, but this had remained just that and there was “no provincial, institutionalised anti-corruption and security management for all departments”.

By 2007, Trollip’s opinion of Balindlela was deteriorating fast. He slammed the amount spent by the premier’s office on hotels, restaurants and travel costs as an “outrageous and reckless” waste of public funds.

“There is a fine line between performing your job according to its mandate and profile, and abusing public funds in the process of performing your job.

“Many of the expenses are nothing short of a blatant and shameful wastage of money. . . that could have served a much higher purpose,” the Daily Dispatch of April 3 quotes him as saying.

On June 11 2008, The Herald reported that Trollip had resorted to using the Public Access to Information Act to compel the premier to release the findings of the Pillay commission into rampant corruption in the province.

He said the premier had spent “millions of scarce tax rands” on such inquiries but none ever saw the light of day. He said a court interdict instructing the premier to release the findings was “shameful and is a blight on your [the premier’s] personal performance”.

By June 12, Trollip had lost patience entirely. In the Daily Dispatch he accused Balindlela of being a “professional undertaker” who ensured the commission’s em- barrassing findings remained sealed off from public scrutiny. On June 20 The Herald reported him as saying the refusal to release the report “smacks of a cover-up and cannot be countenanced any longer”.

But perhaps Trollip’s ultimate analysis of Balindlela came in the days just preceding her firing. In an article headlined, “National democratic revolution’s chickens wreaking havoc in roost”, in the Daily Dispatch on July 17, Trollip launched a scathing assault on cadre deployment in the Eastern Cape, of which he identified Balindlela as a primary culprit who had overseen a failed administration.

“The recent excitement about the possible firing of Premier Nosimo Balindlela is another case in point. It regrettably has nothing to do with the fact that her administration has failed the people of this province; it has everything to do with cadre redeployment. There is no question about Balindlela’s loyalty – she was appointed by President (Thabo) Mbeki himself. She and the soon to be axed premier of the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rasool, openly campaigned for a third term as ANC president for President Mbeki,” he wrote.

This, of course, is fairly mild given the actual devastation the ANC has inflicted on the Eastern Cape before, during and after Balindlela. The province is in a permanent state of meltdown, from education to unemployment, from service delivery to the condition of its public administration and the extent of corruption and maladministration. It is a disaster zone, and many children and adults have been robbed of their rights as a result.

And the DA has, on many occasions, put it more stridently than that. It is amazing that the party never asked for a public reckoning of Balindlela’s failures before so eagerly taking her aboard.

As for Balindlela herself, in Trollip’s own words, she was responsible for failed annual reports, had overseen a “chaotic administration, corruption and compromised delivery, blatantly and shamefully” abused public money.

So, there’s an endorsement to take to the bank. So far as Balindlela’s judgment goes, it is remarkable that Trollip is so willing to champion it.

You’d think, given his experience of Balindlela, he would perhaps be a little more circumspect about its value.

Announcing his candidature for the position of federal chairperson, Trollip said one of his attributes was that he had “the courage of my convictions”. But then, like his attitude to Twitter, there’s an election on the go.

And, in that environment, there appears to be a conviction for every eventuality, past, present and future.

So, take your pick.