/ 29 October 2002

Knives out for Morkel

The Democratic Alliance has delayed to next March a Western Cape party conference that is widely expected to oust Gerald Morkel as the party’s provincial leader.

The conference was scheduled for November 2, but was postponed by unanimous decision of the provincial management committee.

The official view apparently is that a leadership change in the wake of the municipal defections, which cost the DA control of most of its Western Cape councils, would send the wrong signals.

There is widespread speculation that Morkel will not withstand the expected challenges at the conference to his leadership, despite the postponement. Names bandied about as possible contenders include Pauline Cupido, a member of the Western Cape legislature and a former MP; Theuns Botha, mayor of Langeberg and DA provincial chairperson; and Helen Zille, head of the DA in the legislature and a former education MEC.

Morkel will be out of his third executive job in less than a year on Tuesday when the unicity formally changes hands from the DA to the African National Congress-New National Party coalition. The ANC’s NomaIndia Mfeketo will become mayor.

”My work goes on,” Morkel said this week. ”I am still leader of the party. I still enjoy the confidence of my party and colleagues. All that will happen is that I will not be mayor.”

He said his political role as an ordinary councillor would be twofold: to help groom upcoming young councillors and to consolidate the DA ahead of the 2004 election.

The DA’s election campaign was noisily launched on Tuesday night at the Cape Town City Hall under the motto ”DA vs ANC”.

Unhappiness with the provincial leader has simmered in the DA’s Western Cape ranks for some time. Disgruntlement surfaced during the damaging fallout from the Desai commission hearing over Morkel’s public friendship with German tax fugitive Jurgen Harksen and a DM105 000 donation to the party.

Morkel admits that some of his party colleagues and the public might have had doubts about his role. But it had become clear that Harksen was ”a smooth operator” who kept changing his statements. There would be no surprise in the commission’s findings, expected at the end of November, he said.

He said DA leader Tony Leon has been ”fully supportive”.