Eastern Cape Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Athol Trollip formally announced at a press conference his intention to run for the leadership of the official opposition.
He was introduced to the media on Thursday in glowing terms by his Eastern Cape legislature colleague, Veliswa Mvenya: ”His skin is white but he is black.”
He can speak her language, Xhosa, fluently — as well as Afrikaans and English — and she declared him: ”My best friend” who, unlike many leaders, always has his door open.
MPL Bobby Stevenson said that the announcement was made in Cape Town because of the media presence at Parliament. Sitting on the podium was prominent Eastern Cape MP and transport spokesperson Stuart Farrow.
Trollip, who introduced his candidacy to replace Tony Leon as party leader in May, speaking in Xhosa, said that voters were seeing through the image of the DA as racist and ”rich” — tags which the African National Congress had foisted upon it.
Instead, his vision is to have a collective-style leadership drawing on party structures as well as working with other opposition parties, including the United Democratic Movement.
He said he also believed that more needs to be done to better represent the rural communities of the country, ”and this includes black traditional communities and the farming community, both commercial and emerging”.
Trollip said he has spoken to a number of contending candidates to replace Leon — who announced his intention to step down as party leader late last year — including Cape Town mayor Helen Zille.
She has indicated that she had not yet taken a decision to run for the national leadership.
In his discussions with other leadership hopefuls — none of whom had formally announced their candidacy — they had all indicated that the race needs to be conducted in a mature manner.
Others who have been mentioned include federal chairperson Joe Seremane and party CEO Ryan Coetzee. Trollip, however, was careful not to name them individually, apart from Zille, who he said he had telephoned on Thursday morning.
At this stage Trollip — whose father and grandfather were Eastern Cape politicians — is the only official candidate, but it is widely speculated that Seremane, who would be the party’s first black leader, will throw his name into the hat.
Trollip was elected to the Eastern Cape legislature in 1999 after serving as a municipal councillor in the Amathole district municipality from 1995. He became DA provincial leader in 2002, narrowly defeating former Eastern Cape National Party leader Tertius Delport.
His grandfather, also Athol Trollip, was United Party MP for Port Elizabeth Central in the 1950s and his father, Douglas, was a divisional councillor in the Smaldeel divisional council.
Born and bred in Bedford in the Eastern Cape, Trollip was educated at Woodridge College where he was deputy head boy and captained the rugby, swimming, water polo and surf-lifesaving first teams.
He is married to Angela — who flanked him at the press conference — and they have two children Roland (18) and Kate (16). He has given up farming in the Bedford district, where he had been chairperson of the farmers’ association, for politics and the family now lives in East London. — I-Net Bridge