Sources in the Democratic Party have fingered four prominent members of the party as being part of a cabal bent on keeping their grip on the DP in Gauteng. Howard Barrell reports
The machinations of a cabal of old-style liberals lie behind the extraordinary conflict within the Democratic Party that has exploded into the public domain, senior party sources have told the Mail & Guardian.
The aim of the group is to safeguard their grip on the party in Gauteng against the influx of new members, many of them formerly members of more right- wing parties.
Its centre of operations is the Gauteng South region of the party which is centred at the old Houghton constituency. Houghton was for many years during the apartheid era the only seat held by the liberal Progressive Party, one of the DP’s ancestors.
The senior DP sources have named Jack Bloom, a DP member of the Gauteng legislature, Ian Davidson, a DP MP, and prominent Gauteng South party activists Val Mickleburgh and Claire Quail as the key members of the cabal.
The M&G’s sources on the alleged conspiracy spoke on condition of anonymity. Those named by them have emphatically denied the charges.
The allegation of the existence of the cabal is the latest development in a multifaceted row that has rocked the DP just six months after the party’s dramatic electoral growth that made it the official opposition in Parliament.
The M&G’s sources held back from directly accusing the four named as being members of the cabal of involvement in the fraudulent inflation of party membership lists in Gauteng South.
The sources also stopped short of saying directly that they wrote or leaked to several newspapers an anonymous letter containing a virulent attack on DP leader Tony Leon and his brother, Peter, who recently resigned as leader of the party in the Gauteng legislature. The letter referred to the “megalomaniacal Leon brothers and their lackey Douglas Gibson”, the DP’s deputy leader, and accused the three of treating the DP “as their personal fiefdom”.
But the M&G’s sources accused the four, and others, of seeking to manipulate party structures to maintain their control of the Gauteng South region of the party, and of trying to ensure that their region continued to dominate the DP in Gauteng as a whole.
The Gauteng East and Gauteng North regions of the party have grown substantially in recent years, drawing in new support from non-traditional sections of the community. The party’s national leadership is particularly keen to see the party also expand westwards, into Soweto.
“If they can’t accept that the party should expand among Afrikaners, Coloureds, Indians and others, how do they expect the party to develop a black membership and leadership?” asked one of the sources.
Bloom, who left for a holiday in Peru on Wednesday night, declined to comment on the row.
Davidson labelled the allegations against him “preposterous”, “ludicrous” and “mischievious”, adding: “If there are any camps in the party, I am not in one of them.”
Mickleburgh said: “I can absolutely assure you that it is not the case that I have been involved in the activities alleged against me. There is absolutely no way that I would be involved in politicking of this kind.”
Quail declined to comment, saying she would await the outcome of a three-person party inquiry, headed by DP federal chair, Errol Moorcroft MP, into the alleged fraudulent inflation of party lists in four branches of the Gauteng South region.
Peter Leon, one of the main targets of the cabal’s alleged hostility, also declined to comment beyond saying that he had long intended to resign as leader of the DP in the Gauteng legislature to concentrate on his legal practice. He had brought forward his resignation after the row broke out, and Brian Goodall, a DP veteran, has taken over from him.
The DP’s internal inquiry is looking into allegations that, among other things, the memberships of dead people were fraudulently paid for and maintained for use as voting fodder by some members of the party. Under DP rules, the numbers of members in a particular branch or region affect the number of delegates and thus the number of votes it has at party congresses and in the selection of party office-bearers and public representatives.
There are two other dimensions to the internal brawling in the DP. The leaked letter accused Peter Leon of conspiring with Russell Crystal, a former security police agent on the University of the Witwatersrand campus and now a DP member, to break the power of the Gauteng South region. The two were accused of postponing the DP’s provincial congress, due to have been held last month, to allow them to do this.
The other factor is Peter Leon’s performance as leader of the DP in the Gauteng legislature. DP sources accused him of neglecting his political duties in favour of his legal practice.
What has shocked political observers is the acrimony of the dispute in the DP.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, senior DP leaders and members have been prepared to pour vitriol on each other.
One accused the Gauteng South “cabal” of “becoming upset as their tea circle is broken up” by the influx of new members to the party.
Johan Killian of the Gauteng New National Party said he had expected the tension between Bloom and Leon to break surface. “The DP has been trying to be everything to everybody, drawing membership from across the political spectrum, from the Conservative Party to the Pan Africanist Congress. It was only a matter of time before this kind of approach caught up with it,” he said. – Additional reporting by Jubie Matlou and Barry Streek