A media briefing called by the Independent Democrats (ID) to welcome eight new councillors into its ranks in Durban on Friday turned into a public spat with members of the Democratic Alliance (DA).
ID Leader Patricia de Lille lost her temper when DA member and university student Andre Kornuth repeatedly questioned her about her party’s policies.
At first Kornuth identified himself as a journalist, then as a local government student until Lane Greyling, an ID MP, told De Lille he remembered Kornuth from the DA’s election campaigns earlier this year.
De Lille confronted Kornuth by saying he ”smells like the DA. They come in different guises (in all our meetings) and ask the same questions.”
Both she and the ID’s secretary-general Avril Harding said it was ”our press conference and you can’t tell us what to do”.
Kornuth was told to ”get out” and then another DA councillor present asked if all DA members were supposed to go and why De Lille was on the defensive if she could answer their questions.
”I am not on the defensive, just straight,” she said.
He then asked her she if she was afraid at which she retorted: ”I am afraid of no one.”
De Lille called the DA ”stalkers” and claimed that they were at all her party’s meetings and were often confrontational.
”Their methods of spying are just like the old days of apartheid.”
De Lille told the gathering the DA was welcome at her meetings but that they did not have to ”sneak in and pretend,” they just had identify themselves as members of that party.
”I am so proud to be a member of the ID, are they not proud of their party?” Harding asked.
The fight then moved outside where Harding and Gareth Morgan, a DA MP, had a fight about ”protest politics”.
De Lille then phoned the DA’s provincial leader Mike Ellis to report the matter.
The ID was also upset that DA pamphlets had been placed in the windscreens of cars parked outside the meeting.
Mike Ellis said that hundreds of councillors around the country constantly received SMS invitations to ID meetings and that ”no politician can send as many invites to as many opposition leaders as De Lille has and then get upset if they arrive.”
He said he would only respond to the ID’s complaints if he received a formal letter of complaint and that he believed the issue was a ”storm in a tea cup”.
The entire spat drew attention away from the ID’s statement that three councillors from the Inkatha Freedom Party, three from the DA and two from the New National Party had joined the party in KwaZulu-Natal
De Lille said she was to meet a further five councillors in the province on Friday who wanted to ask her some questions before crossing over.
The ID said they were the fastest growing party in the country and had tripled their membership in the past eight months.
The ID said 31 councillors had already crossed over to their party and that most of them were from the NNP.
De Lille said the party had turned away many NNP councillors in the Western Cape because the ID wanted ”quality rather than quantity”. ‒ Sapa