Cape Town | Saturday
THE leader of South Africa’s political opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has demanded the resignation of the mayor of Cape Town in the worst crisis to hit the shaky 15-month merger with the apartheid-era National Party.
DA leader Tony Leon asked Mayor Peter Marais, who used to be member of the NP before the merger, to quit some six weeks after a scandal hit the popular mayor’s office.
In a letter to leaked to the press, Leon said he had “lost confidence” in Marais’ ability to continue as Cape Town mayor.
Marais was suspended in late August amid allegations that two of his aides had submitted hundreds of fake letters of support for his controversial attempt to rename Cape Town’s main road after former president Nelson Mandela.
An inquiry instituted by the DA found that Marais had lied to Leon about the level of public support for the renaming process and had compromised the integrity of the city council.
But last week the council itself cleared Marais of misconduct and the deputy leader of the DA and former National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk began a campaign to have him reinstated.
This was the culmination of a bitter power struggle between Leon and Van Schalkwyk.
The alliance was created in July 2000 in a merger between Leon’s liberal Democratic Party and the ailing NP, which ruled for more than 40 years of apartheid, in a bid to combine their support and present a challenge to the overwhelming majority of the ruling African National Congress.
The DA did well in municipal elections in December, but the merger has been filled with tension from the start as Leon vied for prominence and former NP members struggled to accept their new party members’ more liberal policies.
On Friday the problems became public as Van Schalkwyk told reporters Leon could not “hire and fire people” as he wished while the DA leader stood his ground.
A prominent DA member denied that the party was in danger of splitting, but said Van Schalkwyk should learn who was boss.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the DA “would sail on once we get the pecking order right.” Meanwhile, Leon has a research paper on Cape voters that shows Marais is considerably less popular than the NNP makes out.
The research was organised between May 30 and June 11 by Ryan Coetzee, Leon’s adviser who was formerly attached to the council, together with Research Surveys, a marketing research company. Coetzee declined to comment on any aspect of the research.
Among other things, the report shows:
— That 58% of respondents believe the city’s quality of life is bad; and 68% that it is no better than in the rest of South Africa.
— Significantly, given Marais’s alleged support base, only 26% of coloured respondents believe it is better.
— That 59% disapprove of the job the unicity is doing. Only 5% endorse its job-creation record and 4% its record on crime, while the city gets negative ratings on housing, HIV/Aids and rates.
— That 76% believe the unicity has no clear plan of action; 70% that it is out of touch with their needs; and 63% that it cares more about itself than citizens.
— That 62% oppose Marais’s street-renaming plan. Significantly, 74% of coloured respondents oppose it.
— Only 28% are favourably disposed to Marais and 24% approve of the job he is doing. Interestingly, Marais gets the best rating from white respondents (48% and 44% respectively). Only 24% of coloureds are well disposed to him, while a mere 15% of coloured respondents endorse his performance. Black opinion is most damning: 52% feel very unfavourably towards him and 69% are unfavourable. – AFP, Mungo Soggot