Helen Zille will win next weekend’s DA federal leadership election ‘hands downâ€, a prominent DA official has predicted. But she will need to have superwoman qualities to hold the party together once she dons the leadership mantle.
The knives are out in the Western Cape, where provincial leader Theuns Botha and Zille were called in on Monday by outgoing leader Tony Leon.
Leon issued a statement saying Botha could forge coalitions outside Cape Town and Zille was free to do so in the metropole — where she has forged the coalition that has included the Independent Democrats since January.
Two Afrikaans newspapers hinted this week that Zille was unhappy with Botha — and his Western Cape legislature colleague Kobus Brynardt — meeting ID officials without her knowledge.
Patricia de Lille, the ID leader, long a thorn in Zille’s side, accused Zille of ‘seeing ghosts†and plots, adding that she and her party had every right to meet DA provincial officials about municipal coalitions.
Another DA official, who asked not to be named, said he believed that although Botha and Zille are often publicly at each other’s throats, they need each other. Botha needs Zille as national leader to win the Western Cape premier’s seat for him and to deliver the liberal suburban vote, while he can deliver more conservative former National Party Afrikaners and the coloured vote.
Amid speculation that he, Brynardt and Kent Morkel, also a legislature member and former DA city council caucus chairperson, could join up with the ID in a new party during floor-crossing in September, Botha insisted this week that he was staying in the DA.
Zille will need to hold together 21 Western Cape municipalities where the DA and ID are now in joint control. Drakenstein — including Paarl — fell to a DA/ID coalition last week, and recently Berg River, including Swellendam, also fell to the coalition.
Leon’s strategy of casting De Lille and her party as wolves in sheep’s clothing who sided with the ANC was key to savaging the ID in the Tafelsig municipal by-election last year.
But this strategy will not be possible under the new partnership — particularly because Cape Town city council ID caucus leader Simon Grindrod’s voting bloc of 22 seats needs to be kept on board and relatively happy that delivery is working for their party’s largely coloured constituency.
Zille will have to manage the stresses and strains of the multiparty coalition in Cape Town carefully. Her main campaigner has been former NP minister Tertius Delport, who insiders say is ambitious and wants to retire in a senior position.
He is said to want either the post of parliamentary leader or chief whip, which is being vacated by Douglas Gibson.
Delport, who led the campaign last year to force Leon’s hand in stepping down, was narrowly defeated by Athol Trollip in the Eastern Cape leadership race. Trollip and deputy leader Joe Seremane are Zille’s rivals for the leadership.
The federal executive of the party is to meet straight after the congress on Sunday May 6 to consider other key positions once the leader is elected.
DA CEO Ryan Coetzee — initially outside the Zille camp but now ‘solidly supportiveâ€, as one party official put it — former Gauteng leader Ian Davidson and MP Mike Waters, both strongly supportive of Zille, are likely to want high-profile jobs.
A contest involving one of these against Delport could ensue for the parliamentary leadership, as Zille has promised to continue running Cape Town.
Coetzee may emerge as the key parliamentary spokesman, a job Zille once held.
The figures provided by the party’s executive director, Greg Krumbock, point to a convincing Zille victory. A core 416 of the 1 145 delegates are fellow city councillors, and Zille is strong in all the key provinces, especially Gauteng and the Western Cape. The Eastern Cape has 104 delegates and North West, where Seremane is strong, just 50.
Krumbok reported that most delegates, 346, hail from Gauteng, followed by the Western Cape, with 303. Zille needs to win 50% of the vote to avoid a second round involving the two top candidates, likely to be her and Trollip.