Former DA Eastern Cape chairwoman, Veliswa Mvenya said her experience with the party cuts deeper than what she read in Mbali Ntuli’s statement.
Mvenya said she is yet to heal from all the pain, abuses and emotional torture she received from the DA members after she had quit.
And would require an indepth one-on-one interview than just telephonic to go through all the details.
“I still have wounds, they are not scars yet but I’m soldiering on,” she said.
Mvenya said she can relate to what Ntuli went through as they walked similar journeys altogether her DA politics were more concentrated to Eastern Cape.
“We share a lot in common with Mbali, even though her politics were at national level and mine were more about the DA in the Eastern Cape.
We both can speak our minds and stand by our convictions even when no one stands by us, she said.
Once you are like that, you get to be regarded as a threat to the DA old guard who prefer to be the ones calling the shots and you acting on their orders.”
Mvenya was in her early 30s working as a teacher when she decided to join the Democratic Party in the year 2000.
She said she felt the need for an alternative to ANC which she saw as failing to rebuild the country, particularly the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape.
She worked closely with then DA provincial leader, Athol Trollip who recently joined Action SA.
Mvenya said her fallout with Trollip began when he wanted her to replace him as an Eastern Cape Provincial leader.
“I refused to be handpicked because that would have meant I’m not independent but controlled by him about how I’m leading. It’s a trap that both Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mmusi Maimane fell for and there were consequences when they did not take instructions from the person who hand picked them.”
Cracks deepened between the two when she won against Trollip proxy-candidate during the DA 2014 provincial leadership conference.
She resigned from the DA in 2018 after losing the DA provincial leadership to Nqaba Bhanga a year earlier [2017].
