The Democratic Alliance is losing its key strategist Ryan Coetzee and several MPs, while Parliament has only now received the resignation promised by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela after her fraud and theft conviction last month.
Spin doctor Coetzee (30) is the first to leave, this week. He will join the United States-based political consultancy that devised the party’s 1999 ”Fight Back” election campaign.
Meanwhile, African National Congress spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama confirmed that Madikizela-Mandela had resigned from her positions. At the next Women’s League national conference a new president would be elected.
But the Office of the Speaker in Parliament on Tuesday afternoon said it still had not received her resignation.
As confidante to DA leader Tony Leon, Coetzee has been credited with the party’s strong showing in the 1999 election, after which it became the official opposition. He had joined the Democratic Party at 18 and quickly moved through the ranks.
DA MP Nick Clelland-Stokes (31) will take over the communication and marketing roles until after the 2004 election when he will resign from politics. A public representative since age 24 when he started as a councillor, Clelland-Stokes became an MP at age 27. He is leaving for ”personal reasons”.
And DA MP Raenette Taljaard (30) will go on a four-month sabbatical at Yale University as a World Fellow. She was the youngest ever woman to take her seat in Parliament after 1999 and has been outspoken in her party’s criticism of the arms deal.
Asked about speculation that she would not make herself available as MP after the 2004 poll, Taljaard said she would take part in the DA campaign.
The resignations of DA members barely into their thirties come in the wake of similar losses of key young ANC committee chairpersons. Both Nkenke Kekana (communications) and Mpho Scott (home affairs) left Parliament earlier this year to take up private-sector positions at Telkom and African Legend (energy) respectively.
ANC chairperson of the select finance committee, Mohseen Moosa, has also left Parliament for business.