Letters expose DA rifts

ALLEGATIONS of favouritism, incompetence and misconduct which rocked the DA in the Eastern Cape have been laid bare in internal documents, leaked this week, detailing rifts over a Bedford councillor.

Those who leaked the party’s letters and e-mails dating back to 2011, say they did so to expose how federal chairman Athol Trollip – under whose provincial watch the squabbling carried on – is unfit to become the DA’s Nelson Mandela Bay mayoral candidate.

While some DA members stand firmly behind Trollip’s candidacy, others say he is obsessed with power and has shown favouritism in the party.

Trollip who is originally from Bedford, has rejected the claims.

At the centre of the allegations is the DA’s Bedford councillor Cecilia Auld, who several members claimed was being protected by Trollip and his provincial leadership despite her alleged poor track record in the Nxuba Municipality council.

In one of the e-mails to Trollip in 2012, his father Douglas, who was a branch executive member and has since died, wrote that “Thabo Mbeki was recalled for far less reason than you have got to remove Auld”.

According to the e-mail exchanges, then Bedford DA branch members and leaders felt that not only had Auld been imposed on them by Trollip, she was also not a suitable councillor candidate and was, in fact, an embarrassment to the party.

Auld was found guilty in early 2011 of misconduct by the DA’s provincial disciplinary committee for not paying her long outstanding municipal electricity and services bill which ran into thousands of rands.

Her sanction was a severe reprimand.

She was, however, acquitted by the same committee, chaired by Bay caucus leader Retief Odendaal, of charges of harming the party’s image as it decided that there was no conclusive evidence to show that the electricity bill non-payment was public knowledge.

-Nwabisa Makunga