Triple shock for DA leader Trollip

THE gloves are off – and some of the DA’s toughest foot soldiers are not pulling punches as they gear up to take on their party bosses in Nelson Mandela Bay. The DA’s bid to take over City Hall in August was dealt a triple blow yesterday, when:

• Three of its councillors said to be on the ANC’s candidates’ list blasted Eastern Cape party leader Athol Trollip;
• Six leading DA members announced plans to contest the elections as independents; and
• Another councillor announced he was running for a new party, Building a Cohesive Society (Bacs).

The six northern areas candidates who will be vying for some of the strategic wards in the DA stronghold were introduced by former DA MP and founding party member Donald Lee last night.

At an emotionally charged meeting with about 100 residents at the West End Community Hall, Lee alleged that the DA’s internal election process had been used to settle political scores.

“The DA has great policies and I will still promote the party but not its leadership,” Lee said.

The independents are DA ward councillor Sarina Marlow and members Colin Potgieter (for Ward 11), Charmaine “Sissy” Bibby (for Ward 34), Evelyn Uithaler (for Ward 37), Elsie Dube (Ward 32) and Neville Abrahams (for Ward 35).

They refer to themselves as staunch DA members, but said they had decided to stand as independents because residents in the northern areas had threatened to boycott the elections as their preferred candidates had not made the cut.

“We cannot allow the ANC to win these wards, so we had to do something,” Lee said.

“We had to give them [residents] a reason to come out and vote.”

Earlier, DA councillors Nico du Plessis, Brian Kivedo and Penny Naidoo lashed out at Trollip, accusing him of being a “disrespectful racist” who looked down on black and coloured people.

A secret recording revealed this week that the three are on the ANC’s candidate lists – Du Plessis as the Helenvale ward candidate and Naidoo and Kivedo on the PR list.

This was later confirmed by ANC regional list committee member Mtwabo Ndube.

Fuming over Trollip having accused them of “job-seeking”, the three councillors said they felt degraded by his comments, published in The Herald on Wednesday.

An angry Du Plessis said yesterday: “He makes us look like we were registered at the Department of Labour and we’re queuing for jobs. It just shows you what he thinks of our coloured community.

“It shows that he was brought up that way – to look down on black and coloured people,” Du Plessis said.

“I don’t want to be associated with this disrespectful racist individual anymore. “I’m happy to leave. “I would rather serve under [President Jacob] Zuma than a racist man. I’ve just had enough.

“I’ve worked my butt off for this party and the people of Helenvale, and at every meeting all he has ever done is threaten, threaten, threaten.

“Even the white people are scared of him. They stand at attention when he enters the room.”

Du Plessis said when the news broke that their names were on the ANC list, a group of DA activists had tried to chase his staff out of his office.

“They were saying to my assistant that she must hand over the keys because that’s a DA office. That is a council office.

“Not once has Trollip ever been to my office.”

Trollip shot back, saying being a DA public representative should be a vocation, not a job, and that careerism had destroyed the ANC’s integrity.

“Mr Du Plessis has been in discussions and meetings with the ANC and Danny Jordaan for a long time – I regard that as job-seeking,” Trollip said.

“As for being ‘racist’, why have they been serving the DA for the past 10 years and standing as candidates if I and the DA were racist?”

Trollip said the DA had many more candidates of colour than ever before and certainly more in electable positions than the ANC or any other party because the DA was a party for all people.

He said Du Plessis had been obstructing DA activists from using the “DA ward offices” and using these offices for ANC campaign activities, but this would stop.

Kivedo – who has five degrees, two of them masters degrees – said he had been degraded to a job-seeker.

“I want him [Trollip] to clarify what he means by me being a job-seeker ... he’s tarnishing my integrity,” Kivedo said.

Naidoo, who said she had recently had a fallout with Trollip and DA northern areas constituency leader Edmund van Vuuren, said she had lost respect for Trollip over his “poor treatment” of human beings and would resign from the DA today.

She said the way they treated the members involved had isolated them and shown the worst kind of leadership.

“Since 2009, I have been working in my ward [Ward 31] and won it from the ANC in 2011,” Naidoo said.

“I never want to be associated with the DA again.

“Trollip must go and ask Danny [Jordaan] to teach him how to be a leader.”

The three councillors did not want to comment on their names featuring on the ANC list.

They said they were waiting for the process to be finalised and were not sure if their names were actually on the lists.

Trollip gave the three until midnight on Wednesday to respond to the ANC list claims.

But they had told Trollip that he had not applied the DA’s constitution by giving them 48 hours to respond.

Trollip, however, said they should have read the regulations more closely. “Anyway the truth will soon be out ... “The responses are very predictable from unsuccessful DA candidates.

“You’ll see the same from other unsuccessful candidates from other parties – loyalists today, arch enemies tomorrow,” Trollip said.

“As far as job-seeking goes, the record will soon show that they contested as DA candidates recently and now are ANC.

“This week, Mr Kivedo said in my office, in the presence of his constituency leader and chairperson, that he was still considering his options.

“[He said that] as the DA had decided to take his source of a living for his family away, he would have to consider his options.”

Meanwhile, former ID councillor Jan Lindoor, who moved over to the DA when the parties merged, will be contesting Ward 48 as a Bacs candidate.

Lindoor said he had not been unhappy in the DA but had chosen not to attend his interview when he was shortlisted as a DA PR candidate.

He said he felt that ID councillors had been sold out and the DA did not need coloured people in the party.

“I decided to join Bacs [yesterday] because this is a party that stands for morals such as respect for one another and family values.

“I appreciate ... the fact that they have seen my commitment to our people in our communities,” Lindoor said.