The DA’s James Selfe alongside members of opposition parties last June during the secret ballot court ruling. Photo: Themba Makofane/Gallo Images
James Selfe, the man some say is the most powerful person in the Democratic Alliance, says he believes he still has more to offer the party and intends to stand for another term as chairperson of the federal council.
Selfe has occupied the position for 18 years and hopes to add another term to his name when the party holds its national congress in April.
But there are some in the DA who believe he has served his time and needs to make way for a new candidate to lead the party to the 2019 elections.
“I certainly do [have a lot to offer]. There is a congress coming up and the party would have to decide who it wants. I believe I can continue to make a contribution but that’s not my decision to make,” Selfe said in an interview with the Mail & Guardian this week.
“But I think I would probably be able to find somebody to nominate me.”
But a senior party leader told the M&G that there were some members of the DA who believed Selfe to be monopolising the position and accumulating too much power.
Larger DA provinces, such as the Western Cape and Gauteng, are understood to be at the centre of the unhappiness and the call for him to step aside.
“He’s had such a tight grip on the party that it’s almost impossible for anyone to challenge him and people are becoming resentful,” the party leader said.
“He is the most powerful person in this party … everything goes through his office. Approval of campaigns, hiring in key positions, fundraising, and caucus rules for every single caucus in the country … so many things. Can one person have that much power?”
According to the party insider, Selfe wields more power than party leader Mmusi Maimane and was the reason why Maimane had found it difficult to take tough action against Western Cape Premier Helen Zille for her colonialism tweets.
“When Mmusi started [in the leadership position], he was still so new to the party. He was still a novice. So he did end up delegating a lot of power and authority to other people [like Selfe] and once you do that, it’s tough to get that power back. Once you want to take tough decisions, you realise how difficult it is to get that power back,” the leader said.
Although he has been criticised for representing the interests of a conservative old guard in the party that refuses to accept change, Selfe laughs off these claims, saying that “people say a lot of things about me, but they are not true”.
Recently, criticism was levelled against him when embattled Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille accused the DA of having a “baasskap mentality” that tried to keep black party leaders in their place.
De Lille said Selfe was part of a “backroom boys’ club of white men who are running the DA”. Selfe, however, believes there is no truth in the mayor’s observation.
“I think Patricia sometimes says things in the heat of the moment that she either hasn’t thought through, or she uses [the statements] to mobilise sympathy,” he said this week.
Selfe has remained unwavering on the need to pursue disciplinary action against De Lille, who faces charges of misconduct following allegations that she interfered in key appointments in the City of Cape Town and stripped some decision-making structures of their powers.
Concerns have been raised that what De Lille and her supporters believe to be a witch-hunt against her could affect the DA’s 2019 electoral ambitions, especially among coloured voters, who form the majority in the Western Cape.
Selfe said it was possible that the party would be affected at the ballot box, but that it could not afford to turn a blind eye to De Lille’s alleged misconduct.
“It may very well be that the action that we took will in the short term hurt us electorally, but in the long term I’m sure that we will be vindicated in the action we took, precisely because in the long term we have a project to create good governance in South Africa,” he said.
Another factor that is expected to hurt the DA’s electoral ambitions is the new wave of public optimism in the ruling party after the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the country’s president after Jacob Zuma’s resignation last week.
The DA has acknowledged that the change in ANC leadership will require it to rethink its position and how it executes its strategy ahead of the polls.
Selfe said he believed the optimism surrounding Ramaphosa was a “honeymoon phase” that would soon pass. But he shares the relief about Zuma’s resignation.
“Even I feel relieved that president Zuma is no longer in charge of our country because he was a thoroughly pernicious, evil influence on our politics,” said Selfe.
On his party’s fight against corruption, which Selfe has led, he said the DA would continue its efforts and that the party’s work did not stop with Zuma’s resignation.
He didn’t believe the commitments Ramaphosa made to fight corruption would result in any drastic measures that would render the DA’s role obsolete.
“I suspect it’s going to be half-hearted [action] and for that reason I suspect that we will find ourselves back in court, making sure what has been committed to is actually carried through,” he said.