Du Bois resigns from DA over ‘new style’
FRUSTRATED about the change in leadership style of the DA, long-serving eThekwini councillor Duncan Du Bois has resigned from the party and lashed out in a damning public statement.
Du Bois, the former Bluff ward councillor, had been a DA member since November 2000 and tendered his resignation last week.
“Over the past five years the DA has become an over-managed, proprietorial autocracy. Councillors have become hostage to its multi-layered management structure of bureaucrats, whose requirements have no connection with service to ratepayers,” he said.
Du Bois said at the heart of that bureaucracy was the Performance Development Management System which required a DA councillor to do “nothing” that concerned serving the ratepayer.
“Councillors are seen as political functionaries of the DA. When the DA talks about accountability, it refers to the PDMS requirements,” he said.
He said the system had produced a situation in which a councillor who was conscientious in serving ratepayers and attending to ward work, but fell short on fulfilling PDMS requirements, was labelled an under-performing councillor. In February this year, he was told that he was failing in his duties after not fulfilling the PDMS requirements.
“That letter reinforced my decision to leave the DA at the end of my term. A further fundamental reason for leaving concerns its (the party’s) stance on affirmative action, employment equity and BEE,” he said.
Du Bois said locally the DA faced internal problems with a “cabal” which “vindictively” resented Zwakele Mncwango’s election as KZN leader.
“As a result Mncwango unfortunately finds himself having to fend off intrigue and disingenuousness which the cabal has since escalated into a disciplinary challenge,” he said.
Responding to Du Bois’s resignation Mncwango said he respected his decision and would not be drawn on his comments.
“It would be wrong for me, just because he wrote that letter, to rubbish whatever he has done in the past. I do not want to argue about his reasons why he resigned,” he said.
Political analyst Imraan Buccus said one of the challenges in the post-apartheid political system was that even people who had a conservative past had been accommodated in both the ANC and the DA.
“The DA had a stringent mechanism in place to ensure that its candidates perform the tasks optimally, and if someone becomes a victim of the architecture it comes as no surprise that they would resort to finding excuses for their non-performance,” he said. sphelele.ngubane@inl.co.za