Fiery Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille clashed with the lawyer of former ID Western Cape leader Lennit Max when Max’s disciplinary hearing resumed on Wednesday.
She repeatedly told the lawyer, Leon van Rensburg, to ”keep quiet” as he cross-examined her, and told him she was laughing at his ”silly remarks”.
At one point, the presiding officer, Sarah Christie, told De Lille not to be offensive towards the lawyer.
De Lille also took umbrage at being asked hypothetical questions, insisting: ”I’m not dealing with any ifs any more.”
Part of De Lille’s antagonism stems from the fact that though Van Rensburg is acting for Max, he is also a Democratic Alliance Cape Town city councillor.
She told him that the reason full minutes of an ID parliamentary caucus meeting relevant to the charges against Max were not made available at an earlier high court hearing, in which Van Rensburg was also involved, was that the ID did not want to give the information to the DA.
”We were not prepared to give our minutes to another political party,” she said.
Max faces six charges of misconduct and bringing the party into disrepute. One of them involves his allegedly unauthorised closure of the ID Cape Town metro office and dismissal of employees there.
De Lille said she never told Max to close the office.
”There was no instruction: that’s a fact,” De Lille said. ”If he was stupid, it’s his problem, not mine.”
She denied that she was part of a ”smearing campaign” against Max in which a claim was made that he used his constituency allowance as a Western Cape MPL to pay for beer on a visit to Beaufort West last year.
”So, I don’t need to come back,” she said with a sigh of relief as she concluded her testimony and was told she could go. ”Thank God. I’ve got lots of work to do.” — Sapa