Cape Town politics has more often than not sailed quite close to intrigue and smut and, with one day to go before the official floor-crossing period begins, politicians here are reaching new lows — so much so that mayor Helen Zille discussed city politics with President Thabo Mbeki when they met earlier this week.
Central to the shenanigans of the city’s political leaders is the precarious balance of power in the city and in most of the Western Cape’s 25 municipalities.
Zille’s DA and its multiparty coalition, consisting of various smaller political parties, are running Cape Town, but this alliance could easily be upset by the ANC, which holds only 10 seats less than the DA.
The ANC has 81 seats in the city council; the DA has 91, Patricia de Lille’s ID 22; and a further 16 seats are held by smaller parties — 13 of which tend to vote with the DA and three which side with the ANC.
Badih Chaaban, leader of the African Muslim Party and a multimillionaire businessmen, is single-handedly responsible for most of the headlines the floor-crossing period has generated thus far.
Chaaban is launching his party, the National People’s Party (NPP), on September 1 and is confident he will be at the forefront of a coup to take the city back from the DA.
Chaaban said in an interview with the Mail & Guardian that he is working with the ANC and that together they will take the city back from the ”racist and anti-poor DA”.
”I’ve been talking to the ANC since January this year,” Chaaban said. ”But the ANC phoned me at six this morning and asked me to zip it because they know that I’m indiscreet — I can’t tell you who in the ANC I’ve made a deal with.”
Chaaban is suing Zille for calling him a ”fucking shit” and a ”fucking rubbish”.
He reciprocated this week and called her a ”fucking bitch”.
”I have seven affidavits that she called me a rubbish. Yes, I am obsessed with toppling Zille because Cape Town’s mayor should be a coloured person who understands poverty and who will genuinely uplift the poor,” Chaaban said.
ANC spokesperson Garth Strachan didn’t deny that the ANC has had meetings with Chaaban, but ”categorically denies” that the ANC has made a deal with him.
”We have no agreement with Chaaban whatsoever,” Strachan said.
Chaaban has been accused of bribing councillors to join his NPP and was filmed and recorded allegedly offering a 22-year-old girl and R200 000 to Theuns Botha, the Western Cape leader of the DA — in return for which Botha was to deliver the votes of seven DA councillors — an allegation Chaaban denies.
Zille said the next two weeks would be ”the worst time on the political calendar — it’s awful”.
”The next two weeks will be the ninth attempt to bring us and multiparty democracy down,” she said.
”I even got an SMS from the ID asking me to cross the floor — I did get an apology a short while later, but it shows you how everybody is desperately wheeling and dealing and shopping around.”
Zille and De Lille, whose ID is rumoured to be about to suffer the biggest loss of councillors during this period, announced this week that they will maintain their coalition and will not enter into any deals with Chaaban — ”the man is a total thug and we should keep him out of politics,” Zille said.