De Lille’s DA lifeline cut by clashes?
PATRICIA de Lille is staring down the barrel – and not for the first time.
Last week, the news broke that the DA, which she joined in 2010, had sent De Lille an ultimatum to either resign from her position as Cape Town mayor or say why she should not be suspended.
DA spokesperson Phumzile van Damme would only say the party had been made aware of “a number of issues” among the party’s caucus in the City of Cape Town. This had prompted De Lille’s suspension from party-political activities and a probe by a DA ad hoc subcommittee.
“The subcommittee has now completed its work, and has found sufficient management- and governance-related challenges prevalent in the DA’s City of Cape Town caucus, negatively impacting the City’s mandate to govern efficiently for the people of Cape Town.
“As an organisation, the DA prides itself on excellent governance standards, guided by the values of accountability and transparency. It was for this reason that the leader directed the caucus of the City of Cape Town to establish an independent investigation to probe these allegations,” said Van Damme.
In what might be a backhander, Van Damme said the party’s action, was the first step in bringing in a new management to its City of Cape Town caucus “that is stable, functional, and focused on delivering the highest quality of services to all of its residents”.
De Lille was given until early January to supply reasons she should not resign as mayor.
Despite returning as Cape Town’s mayor for a second term in August last year, when the DA won a two-thirds majority in the local government elections, De Lille has had many clashes with her party colleagues.
Long-time DA councillors have often complained that “Auntie Pat”– as she is colloquially known – can’t be trusted because of her history in the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), particularly with that party’s rallying call of “one settler, one bullet”.
She had clashed with her most bitter rival in the City of Cape Town, JP Smith, who is also a close confidant of Western Cape Premier Helen Zille.
De Lille had referred to Smith, who is responsible for the safety and security portfolio on her mayoral committee, as an attention-seeking cowboy, and last year he was barred from engaging directly with the media, which had been viewed as undermining her.
One of Smith’s pet projects – the special investigations unit – was disbanded following complaints from some DA councillors, including those close to De Lille, that it had breached its mandate by investigating councillors – a function which rested in the office of the Speaker.
Her push for transformation in the City of Cape Town, whether it be the renaming of prominent city streets after Struggle heroes, the allocation of resources, or the call for social housing to be built in the city centre, has riled some of her white colleagues.
Several councillors have confirmed that complaints had at first been sent to Zille, as the former leader of the DA. These complaints caused the relationship between Zille and De Lille to grind to a halt.
Their weekly breakfast meetings on Mondays were soon a thing of the past, and then Zille cancelled her appearance on a monthly paidfor radio call-in show with De Lille earlier this year.
The first sign of trouble was when De Lille suddenly resigned as DA Western Cape leader over claims that one of her aides had leaked internal party information to Rapport newspaper.
Last year, her right-hand man, and current DA City of Cape Town chief whip Shaun August, was accused of flouting the party’s procurement rules when T-shirts were acquired for the party’s local government election campaign. He escaped with a slap on the wrist.
August had campaigned to replace De Lille as DA Western Cape leader, but their association – he had formerly been an Independent Democrats (ID) member – ensured that Zille’s choice for the position, Bonginkosi Madikizela, beat his closest rival (Lennit Max) with hardly any resistance.
Amid all this, De Lille has been blamed for the City’s response to Cape Town’s drought crisis, and while this was not enough to see her being removed, a whispering campaign over security upgrades to her home – which the Cape Town Speaker Dirk Smit insisted she was entitled to – had increased calls for her removal.
Now a scandal over irregularities in the City’s transport directorate, which is responsible for the MyCiTi bus rapid transit (BRT) system, seems to have been the undoing of De Lille.
She has been accused, alongside City manager Achmat Ebrahim, of targeting a whistle-blower, Craig Kesson, who had claimed in an affidavit that the pair had failed to take action against a senior City official implicated in allegations of financial misconduct.
This was related to allegations of nepotism and tender manipulation over plans to develop the Foreshore and the acquisition of electric buses for MyCiTi.
In an affidavit, Kesson charged that Ebrahim had failed to ensure the proper implementation of the City’s contract with AEM and ICT Works, contracted to implement station management and related systems for the MyCiTi BRT.
Formerly a national vice-president of the PAC-aligned National Council of Trade Unions in the late 1980s, De Lille first came into the public consciousness as a negotiator for the PAC at the Codesa talks, which preceded democracy in South Africa in the early 1990s.
A member of Parliament for the PAC, and perhaps its most vocal face in public, De Lille would use her reputation as a whistle-blower to abandon the party, while retaining her parliamentary seat during the walk-over in 2003 to form the ID before the 2004 general election.
The ID initially put up a creditable performance in the 2004 poll and increased its representation to municipalities during the 2006 local government elections.
But when it performed poorly in the 2009 general election, the writing was on the wall as the party faced increasing debts. Noticing this, Zille came calling like a Wall Street raider, at first getting De Lille to join her party and then collapsing the ID into the DA.
While De Lille probably had ambitions for the ID as a credible opposition to the ANC, the party failed to attract enough support nationally, doing better in the Western Cape. This might have been the bargaining chip used to consolidate the DA’s coloured support and secure its electoral dominance.
Some in the DA still resent the deal as it moved ID members further up the food chain, securing them jobs either in Parliament or in the City of Cape Town’s administration.
While critical of the DA, De Lille had in 2006 thrown then Cape Town mayor Zille a lifeline when her councillors joined the DA-led coalition as smaller parties were seeking to make deals with the ANC to return it to power.
Whether the DA’s ultimatum to her brings her political career to a close, De Lille’s experience with the party might yet prove to be a cautionary tale to smaller political parties which will be eager to form coalitions as political power in South Africa fragments.
It might prove to be a cautionary tale to smaller parties eager to form coalitions