/ 15 December 2011

Mnqasela: DA gunning for me because I didn’t back Lindiwe

Mnqasela: Da Gunning For Me Because I Didn't Back Lindiwe

Democratic Alliance MP Masizole Mnqasela says that his support for ousted DA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip is behind the disciplinary charges laid by the party against him.

Mnqasela is facing six charges, which cover a wide range of issues including comments he made about the party’s former national spokesperson and now DA parliamentary leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko, and party leader Helen Zille.

But the DA have added new charges of undue solicitation of work from the DA-run Western Cape government and undermining a colleague in his constituency.

Mnqasela is preparing to fight the charges and said he would respond to each of them in due course after studying them with his legal team.

But he said: “I’ve always said that those who supported Trollip [in his campaign to retain parliamentary leadership] will become victims. That is now coming true but I will not succumb to pressure.”

Trollip lost his position as DA parliamentary leader to Mazibuko in October during an internal party election. It was in the build-up to these elections that Mnqasela campaigned for Trollip, saying he believed his vast experience would advance democracy in the DA, while Zille lobbied for Mazibuko.

At the time Mnqasela questioned Zille’s support for Mazibuko, saying it was hypocritical to pretend race had no part in the leadership contest, otherwise there would have been no reason to remove a competent leader such as Trollip.

He was also quoted as having said that if he closed his eyes and listened to Mazibuko speaking, he could swear that he was listening to a white person.

In response, Zille attacked Mnqasela in her weekly newsletter and accused him of “Verwoerdian thinking”.

“Even in the DA, Verwoerdian thinking sometimes rears its ugly head,” Zille wrote. “Thus it was that Masizole Mnqasela, a DA MP, made a fool of himself and the party on prime time radio by stating that Lindiwe Mazibuko was not black enough to become the DA’s parliamentary leader.”

Registrar of the party’s federal legal commission Debbie Schafer told the Mail & Guardian this week that the charges against Mnqasela related to the comments he made about Mazibuko and other people in the party, “which indicated a nature of stereotyping and which we find problematic”.

He was also charged for comments made about Zille’s running of the party “like an African dictator”; undermining the party with his actions in his constituency; undermining Western Cape human settlements minister Bonginkosi Madikizela; and twice approaching Western Cape director general Brent Gerber, asking him to facilitate work for his [Mnqasela’s] companies and saying he will, in turn, take care of him.

Schafer said Mnqasela was “obviously using his position as an MP” to solicit this work.

She said the party had ignored the first attempt to solicit work from the provincial government, allegedly made in 2009, because they thought it was some error in judgment. “But he met this guy again in October this year. Considering everything that has happened, we see there is a pattern here.”

She said they had received complaints from Madikizela over a period of time about Mnqasela around rumours he spread about Madikizela in the community, including being behind a petition to have Madikizela removed by Zille from his position.

Mnqasela and Madikizela used to share Khayelitsha as their constituency but Madikizela has since moved to Drakenstein.

Mnqasela will appear before a five-member disciplinary panel, which is scheduled to sit for three days from February 1 next year, to hear his case.

The decision of the panel will then be taken to the DA’s federal executive for consideration. The federal executive can accept the decision as it is or either increase or reduce a sanction.