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Federal chairperson hopeful and Tshwane executive Mayor Solly Msimanga is preparing for a battle of ideas at the DA’s congress.
“It is not the battle for the soul of the party, but it is a battle of ideas of how to get to where we are going. It is about asking if we have been applying the right tactics and tools to get to where we need to go,” he told City Press on the sidelines of a Tshwane council meeting last week.
This year marks 12 years in the party for the 37-year-old democrat.
He was recruited into the party after he criticised it for its “hit and run” approach to events.
After attending a party meeting addressed by then leader Tony Leon, Msimanga wrote that he found the event impersonal.
The former Gauteng chairperson says the party has a problem retaining the people it recruits, leading to a constant fluctuation in membership.
Msimanga is calling for the party to rethink how it does events and communicates its successes.
“We have been focusing too much on the ANC’s blunders and are not communicating our successes. I think if you were to look at the issue of land ownership, we have given more title deeds than the ANC has.
“We should have communicated that and emphasised that we want people to own land. That is what we have already started doing, even before this became such a sexy topic.”
Should he muster the numbers to dislodge Athol Trollip, Msimanga says he will invest his energies into setting up systems to ensure “organic growth” in the DA.
Another battle which will play itself out at congress is the push for a deputy leader.
Msimanga is of the view that there is too much focus on the leader, to the detriment of other officials and the party.
“There is a serious need to defocus the party from evolving around one person. At the moment it is around the leader and if you have a DA national event, it is not an event unless the leader is there. If you talk about the top six of the ANC, you can name them, but you can’t do the same with the DA. We need to spread the word and put all our officials out there.”
