Barry Streek
The Democratic Alliance has started picking up the pieces after the “great schism”, broadening its top leadership structure to keep New National Party members on board and make it more racially representative.
The party’s national management committee decided this week to co-opt four black Democratic Party members MPs Donald Lee, Dan Maluleke and Richard Ntuli, and KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature member Wilson Ngcobo.
At the same time 10 members are to be added to the 34-member management committee to represent NNP-affiliated councillors, one for each province except for the Western Cape, which will have two.
The committee’s chairperson, James Selfe, said the changes were “very deliberately done to promote representivity”.
At the committee’s meeting on Friday, only one of its members was African and three were women. With such a balance, it was clear the party could not promote itself in black communities.
The DA had 1 437 councillors throughout the country, Selfe said. More than 500 of these were former NNP members, half of them in the Western Cape.
Apparently to prevent NNP members being forced to take sides, the committee decided to allow them to maintain their membership of the NNP for the moment.
However, public representatives will be prohibited from aligning themselves with, or promoting, parties outside the DA. Councillors who break this rule face expulsion and the loss of their seats.
The DA’s provincial management committees will decide on steps to be taken against DA members who actively support the NNP.
The DA has also established a national trust fund to promote community based development and job creation projects, a move clearly aimed at involving it in service delivery in deprived areas