Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon came out fighting on Tuesday, hours after his party had lost control of Cape Town, and dared the New National Party and the African National Congress to call an election in the Mother City.
He also said Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi had SMS’d all DA councillors on Monday night urging them not to cross the floor.
”After a year of back-stairs manipulation and chequebook politics, the NNP managed to scrounge just 27 defectors out of 107 DA councillors in Cape Town.
”How pathetic,” Leon told reporters and DA councillors at a media conference held in the party’s parliamentary caucus room. The NNP and its new partner, the ANC, won over enough councillors to take control of the Mother City earlier in the day, shortly after a 15-day defection window opened at midnight in terms of last week’s Constitutional Court ruling.
The NNP had needed 24 of its former members to return to the party for the DA to lose control of the city. Seventy of the 107 DA seats in the unicity are held by former members of the NNP, and 37 by ex-Democratic Party stalwarts. The ANC has 77 seats.
The NNP broke away from the DA late last year, and entered into a co-operation agreement with the ANC. Leon said Buthelezi had sent a message to councillors shortly before the crossing-the-floor window opened spelling out the IFP’s principled position against defections, and appealed to DA councillors ”with conscience” not to cross the floor.
”I am delighted that the overwhelmingly majority of councilors haven’t just listened to me but also to the wise words of Minister Buthelezi.” His party remained open to the possibility of co-operating with the IFP.
”We certainly remain open to co-operative possibilities (with the IFP).” He added that the NNP had been reduced to the status of a ”junior sales assistant” for the ANC.
While the NNP/ANC alliance was, short-sightedly, billing its gains in Cape Town as a victory, it was ignoring the fact that voters were enraged at the way they had been betrayed. It was incumbent on any new administration to seek a new mandate from the people.
”So, if the ANC/NNP were confident of the people’s support, they would call an election in Cape Town. But they won’t, because, when you cut through all the political pomp of this morning, they are political cowards who would rather grab power through bribery and trickery than win it fairly through the ballot box.”
He said the DA would lose significantly less than half of the 612 NNP-nominated DA councillors nationally, and that his party was now stronger than before its alliance with the NNP. The DA’s growing support, especially in black areas, would translate into 100 seats in Parliament in 2004, while the NNP would be lucky to win 15.
This, Leon said, would open places for those DA members who had lost their seats in the unicity. The DA currently holds 38 seats in the National Assembly, against the NNP’s 28. Of the DA’s former political partners, he likened them to a computer virus. ”They (the NNP) are like a virus that infects a computer, let them go an infect another organisation,” Leon said to laughter and applause from the assembled DA members.
Trumpeting the unicity defections in the early hours of the morning, NNP leader and Western Cape premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk promised to deliver another ”two or three” municipalities every day for the next two weeks.
The NNP and the ANC would ”give dignity back to the people of Cape Town”.
”They will now have a government that they can be proud of again and that will govern in their interest,” Van Schalkwyk said. – Sapa