Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille has come out firing against the Democratic Alliance over what she describes as its “hypocrisy”, by entering into coalitions with its arch-rival African National Congress in towns “all over the Western Cape”.
In her bi-weekly column, Out of Patricia’s Pen, published on the Independent Democrats website, the ID leader said the DA’s “bleak governing history” in Cape Town made her realise that it shouldn’t have come as a shock when the DA ignored its election manifesto promise to its voters to institute the multi-party executive system of government in the city.
De Lille has been sparring with the DA after it accused her of lying, by claiming that she had said she would not back the outgoing ANC administration in Cape Town led by then mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo, and then voting for her.
“The fact that it is wrong for us to vote with the ANC for exco [the mayoral committee] in Cape Town, but fine for the DA to form coalitions with the ANC in numerous municipalities, brings their hypocrisy out into the open,” she charged.
De Lille’s party is fighting a municipal by-election in Tafelsig in Mitchells Plain — after its own councillor resigned and joined the DA. The by-election, which takes place on June 7, will determine whether or not the DA-led governing coalition increases its council majority from one to two.
Referring to the by-election, she said: “By far the most disturbing and regressive element of the DA’s dirty tricks campaign in Tafelsig is the way the party is playing on the racial fears of the coloured people.” The area is coloured and working-class.
“There is nothing more disgusting than cooking up racial hatred to shore up support. While the ID is working towards bridging the racial divides, the DA continues along the lines of its ‘Take back your city’ [from the blacks] campaign.”
She said many people had attempted “to get me entangled in the ‘coloured debate’, but I have never really seen the point. In the old South Africa I was classified as ‘coloured’ against my will, but now I am a South African. The poorest of the poor are my priority, no matter the colour of their skin.
“The DA, on the other hand, is a party that continues to drum into the coloured people’s heads the apartheid notion that, ‘you are better than the black man, but you will never be good enough to be white’.” — I-Net Bridge