Xed out: The plan by the Democratic Alliance’s Cilliers Brink for the Tshwane metro election has backfired. Photo: Deon Raath/Gallo Images
Thursday.
The numbers appear once more not to have numbered for the Democratic Alliance (DA) — or at least not for its 69 councillors in the Tshwane metropolitan council.
The party’s decision to have its councillors number their votes — instead of simply making their Xs next to the head of ActionSA’s Kholofelo Morodi — so that they couldn’t vote for the other side, didn’t work out the way caucus leader Cilliers Brink had hoped.
Rather than getting Morodi over the line, the DA’s master plan to enforce loyalty from their councillors resulted in their votes being regarded as spoiled and Mncedi Ndzwanana, of the African Transformation Movement (ATM), took the speaker’s post in Tshwane.
Brink’s “strategic decision” about how it could replace the Congress of the People’s Murunwa Makwarela, whose degree in typography got him the boot — and potentially a few years in an orange onesie — hasn’t achieved the desired aim.
The Electoral Commission of South Africa found that the DA’s numbers game compromised the secrecy of the ballot, declared the votes spoiled and named Ndzwanana as speaker by a margin of 105 votes to 37.
The DA contingent stormed out of the council sitting in a huff after getting the result, appalled to discover that the country’s electoral laws apply to everybody — even them.
After much tweeting, bleating and breast-beating — a political demand to talk to the manager — the DA has, we are told, accepted that they couldn’t Karen their way into the speaker’s office in Tshwane.
Fair enough.
Brink’s caucus colleagues can’t be pleased, not only with the outcome but the level of trust their leadership has in them, or the sudden realisation that the word democratic in the Democratic Alliance doesn’t describe the manner in which it conducts its business.
Their voters can’t be too impressed either, having themselves managed to successfully make their mark in November 2021, only to find that their elected representatives somehow don’t have the ability to do the same.
No matter how the party leadership spins it, they have nobody to blame but the DA for getting zero bang for their ballot — and an ATM speaker — in Tshwane this week.
Again.
One wonders if Brink came up with the plan to keep his councillors in line and hand the vote to the other side by himself, or whether he called in the party’s brains trust?
Perhaps he thought this up all on his lonesome, with no adult supervision.
Somehow though, the idea of forcing one’s councillors to mark their papers with numbers allocated to them, to impose the leadership’s will rather than trusting them to do the right thing, does have something of a Zilleresque feel to it.
As chairperson of the DA’s federal council, Helen is central to the party’s coalition talks at municipal level, so my money’s on Babes wa Colonialism having called the move from above — or at least having given it the green light.
One wonders if the DA will continue with its mark-of-the-beast approach when it holds its federal congress next month, just to make sure nobody strays and votes inappropriately?
If the party can’t trust its councillors — elected leaders themselves who have passed all kinds of internal vetting processes — to vote without being monitored, how can it trust its rank-and-file delegates to vote in its own internal elections without Helen looking over their shoulder?
It’s no surprise that Helen has the appetite for a second term as federal council chairperson, having served two terms previously as party leader — and a brief spell in political exile during Mmusi Maimane’s short-lived tenure.
Zille’s been turning back the clock in the DA since 2019 — a malevolent West Coast Donald Trump in a blue skipa with a thirst for payback and a point to prove — so there will be no stopping her as long as the party has members and voters to alienate.
Make the DA Great Again.
Zille had been standing uncontested, until party member Lungile Phenyane came out of obscurity and secured nomination to go up against the former Western Cape premier.
It’s a bit of a David-versus-Goliath scenario.
Zille has left a trail of high-profile political corpses in her wake over the years, but Phenyane appears to be up for it, having also secured nomination to stand against party leader John Steenhuisen.
If the numbers don’t number for Phenyane in either post, she is still in the game.
Phenyane has been nominated to stand as federal chairperson, deputy federal chairperson, federal finance chairperson and deputy chairperson of the federal council.
A whole top six, in one human being.