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Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane is trying to rein in the party’s divided caucus in the City of Cape Town, where last week the majority of DA councillors voted internally, expressing their lack of confidence in mayor Patricia de Lille.
In a stinging rebuke Maimane not only raised concerns about “the amateurish way” in which the Cape Town caucus has been conducting itself at the expense of service delivery in some cases, but he also seeks to gag councillors who have been vocal in the media and on social media about developments in the caucus and in the city’s administration.
Maimane wrote to each one of the DA’s councillors in Cape Town on Thursday, the day after councillors voted against De Lille, to read them the riot act. In the letter seen by City Press, the recently re-elected DA leader also raised an issue with the party’s Cape Town Metro region, whose executive earlier this month distanced themselves from the city’s draft budget for 2018/19, tabled by De Lille for public comment last month.
DA Cape Metro chairperson, Grant Twigg, claimed that De Lille had not allowed for much input from councillors in drawing up the city budget. Twigg went as far as saying that the budget, in its current form, was unacceptable and could not be approved by a caring DA government.
“I have become increasingly concerned and frustrated at the, frankly, amateurish way in which the members of the City of Cape Town caucus are conducting themselves at the moment. While the developments surrounding the mayor are understandably unsettling and provoke emotional responses, this cannot stand in the way of your duty to run the city effectively and to deliver proper services to the people of Cape Town,” Maimane wrote.
He said some members of the caucus seemed to think they are entitled to ventilate their opinion openly – to the media and/or via social media – on matters that relate to caucus discussions or on how the city is being administered. “There is now a bizarre situation where the party’s political authority for Cape Town [the metro region] has openly rejected the city’s budget. Whatever the merit of this argument, this move has left voters completely mystified, and there has been no attempt by the city or the DA councillors to enlighten the ratepayers.”
To “cauterise” the situation, Maimane instructed councillors to no longer communicate with the media or post on social media without express authority of the deputy chairperson of the party’s federal council, Thomas Walters, who is also a DA member of Parliament, or a person authorised by him. “If any person, directly or indirectly, communicates anything without authority, disciplinary action will be taken against him or her,” he wrote.
Maimane also informed the caucus that he was setting up a team that will interact with the caucus executive to manage the way in which caucus processes its decisions and to assist in building the caucus into a unified team. He said, while he accepted that factions were in some senses inevitable in political organisations, they should never be allowed to paralyse or hinder service to the voters. He will be addressing the caucus this Wednesday as the start of a process to fix whatever is not working, he states in the letter, while also inviting the councillors to a light dinner with him on the same day.
Maimane’s spokesperson, Portia Adams, said the DA leader is “fed up” and his patience has worn thin by the goings on at the City. “The residents of Cape Town are rightly annoyed and we need to get the city working again and focused on residents’ issues,” said Adams.
