The knives are out for long-serving DA heavyweight Helen Zille. The outspoken DA federal council chair is facing a palace coup in the party’s next elections as her detractors blame her for the party’s declining electoral fortunes and the exodus of black leaders.
Jockeying for positions in the party has begun in earnest in the run-up to the official opposition’s elective congress in April, just a few months before the 2024 provincial and national elections.
Sunday World has learnt that moves are afoot to field a candidate to challenge Zille for the powerful position of the federal council chairperson.
While there seems to be consensus that party leader John Steenhuisen should be elected for a second term, it has emerged that there was a strong push for Zille to be ousted at the congress.
Several leaders told Sunday World that Zille’s leadership style and her controversial apartheid tweets had cost the party votes and threatened to derail its electoral chances at the polls.
A DA MP said Steenhuisen was operating in the shadow of Zille, who is a former party leader. “If we get someone to contest her (Zille), we will support that. Honestly, Helen is running the party. People find it hard to oppose her. We support John to have a second term, but the problem is Helen. Her apartheid tweets have been costly,” the MP said on condition of anonymity.
In October 2019, Zille made a spectacular comeback to the leadership echelons of the party after beating then DA federal chairperson Athol Trollip and senior leaders Mike Waters and Thomas Walters for the post. This was after the resignation of long-serving federal chairperson James Selfe.
At the time, the party was in turmoil, with former leader Mmusi Maimane facing allegations of failing to declare a car donation from controversial company Steinhoff. Days after Zille’s election, Maimane resigned from the DA.
Maimane was followed by other senior black leaders including former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, who claimed that the party had been captured by a white cabal.
Sunday World understands that intense lobbying is underway as the official opposition prepares for its congress.
While DA’s Gauteng federal leader Solly Msimang expressed his support for Steenhuisen, he was non-committal when asked about Zille. “There’s definitely a need for continuity with John. Regarding Helen, I’d prefer not to say anything at the moment.”
Asked whether he would support Zille for another term, Msimang said: “There’s internal lobbying that is currently taking place but it remains an internal party discussion and I cannot take it out to the media.”
Another DA leader who has thrown his weight behind a second term for Steenhuisen but is non-committal about his support for Zille is Eastern Cape leader Nqaba Bhanga.
“I will support John to lead us to 2024 because he has brought stability in the party.” Asked about Zille, Bhanga refused to express a view.
Two key black DA leaders in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) said if the party wanted to dismantle the notion it is regressing, it had to get rid of Zille. Another leader said they were pushing for Steenhuisen’s second term because they believed he could save the party. “Remember, since the departure of many of the black leaders, we have been taking a heavy electoral knock in places that were once our strongholds. Besides that, he (Steehuisen) is still young, there are black constituencies that are willing to give him a chance. Helen is too reckless and there’s a feeling that she wanted to take the party with her whenever she decides to
retire,” said the leader.
DA has lost talented black leaders including former deputy federal chairperson of the party, Magashule Gana, who resigned in August, and former Midvaal mayor Bongani Baloyi, among others.
The latest prominent leader to quit the party is its former KZN leader Zwakele Mncwango, who has since joined ActionSA.
Responding to these allegations, Zille lashed out at her detractors, saying they should field a candidate to challenge her. “None of the voices have come to me. It is strange that they would go to the media. I have never usurped John’s powers. I stay in my lane and do the job I am mandated to do by the party’s constitution, and I am going to stand (at the congress). I do not think John will be opposed.”
Zille remains unfazed by those who want her out. “It is just weird that one or two people who do not have the courage of their convictions run to the media. Are they on Fedex or federal council (the two bodies that I chair)? I bet they aren’t.
“Have you bothered to establish what their agenda is because people who run to the media often have an agenda, and journalists often do not establish what that agenda is…. I know I am doing my job properly and that is all that matters.”
Zille accused the media of perpetuating a false narrative that black leaders were leaving the DA.
“We have well over 450 black African DA elected public representatives. Far more black leaders have been elected in the DA than have left over the past four years. Yet the media has a double standard. Have you counted how many black or white leaders have left the ANC? ActionSA lost more black leaders in one province alone, in KZN, in one week than we have lost in the past four years,” she said.
She also labelled as fallacy that the blue party was bleeding voters.
“The Social Research Foundation published recently a poll that says the DA has already overtaken the ANC in urban South Africa, where the DA now stands at 37% and the ANC at 33%,” she said.
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