African National Congress attempts to wrest power from a Democratic Alliance-led coalition in Cape Town bode ill for the country’s political future, DA leader Tony Leon said on Friday.
”The ANC’s behaviour raises serious and troubling questions about how that party will behave when its national majority cracks — as eventually it must,” he said in his weekly online letter.
”Will it then accept the will of the people? Or will it, like the Zanu-PF [Zimbabwean ruling party] it admires and sometimes emulates, cling to power at all costs?”
Leon accused the ANC and Independent Democrats (ID) of seeking to obtain the majority in the Cape Town city council at all costs.
The ID, with the backing of the ANC, is to bring a motion to change the governance system from an executive mayoral one, to one in which the city is run by an executive council.
This would result in the crumbling of the DA-led ruling coalition, and see proportional representation for the three biggest parties — the DA, ANC and ID.
”The ANC and ID claim that they are merely seeking to restore the executive system of government, which is after all in the DA manifesto,” Leon said.
”They say they want a government in which the major parties are represented according to their share of the vote in the recent local government elections.
”It is odd, to say the least, that the ANC and the ID are not pursuing this system of government in any other city in the country, and odder still that neither party had endorsed it until a few weeks ago.
”What they are really trying to do is turn the ANC-ID minority vote of 49% into a controlling majority of 51% or higher.”
Leon did not explain why the DA had abandoned its backing for the executive committee system in Cape Town.
In its election manifesto, the party says: ”The DA will use the executive committee system, not executive mayors, to govern cities. This will ensure that power is not centralised in one person and that all residents are represented in the key decision-making bodies.”
Leon accused ID leader Patricia de Lille of offering ID votes to the ANC for her own selfish reasons, and despite objections from party members.
”Her unabashed pursuit of power without principle, or power for power’s sake would make her a sort of latter-day ‘Kortbroek’ or ‘Kortrok’ perhaps,” Leon said, referring to the nickname for former New National Party leader turned ANC Cabinet minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
”Yet her lack of success in matching up the betrayal of her voters to the delivery of power to her new political masters makes her, in the harsh light of day, a particularly unsuccessful ‘Kortbroek’ or ‘Kortbroek-lite’.”
He also had criticism for the ANC on recent allegations of Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers failing to disclose business interests.
”Instead of coming clean or opening up the presidency claimed, without offering any proof or substantiation, that most of the companies mentioned in Auditor-General Shauket Fakie’s report were either moribund or that the ministers concerned had resigned.
”No further evidence was offered and no further queries were entertained. This is quite extraordinary in a transparent democracy.”
Referring to President Thabo Mbeki’s axing of National Intelligence Agency director-general Billy Masetlha, Leon said this highlighted the split in the ruling party.
Masetlha is alleged to have been behind a number of hoax e-mails falsely implicating senior figures in the government and opposition (including Leon himself) in a conspiracy to delegitimise axed deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Zuma, standing trial for corruption and rape, needed no assistance in undermining himself, Leon said.
”He seems to have done a splendid job of this all on his own.”
Leon said the ”civil war” within the ANC was coming to a head, and warned of the possible effects of the party’s hold on power being threatened.
He cited Cape Town mayor Helen Zille having to arrange VIP protection for city councillors who reported having been threatened for not endorsing ”the ANC’s bid to stay in power”.
”The ANC’s bully tactics had a specific objective: to pressure smaller parties to back an ANC-ID initiative to seize control of the city,” Leon claimed. – Sapa