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SOUTH AFRICA: Firebrand Politician Enters Mayoral Race

Renee Lewis

CAPE TOWN, Mar 23 2011 (IPS) - The woman described by former South African President Nelson Mandela as his “favorite opposition politician”, Patricia de Lille, has thrown her hat in for the position of mayor of Cape Town.

“We can make a great city even greater,” De Lille declared at the announcement of her candidacy. “Cape Town is my home. My parents lived in this city, I have lived here since the 1960s, and I began my political career in the resistance movement on the Cape Flats.”

De Lille, leader of the Independent Democrat (ID) party, has formed a controversial alliance with the Democratic Alliance (DA) led by Helen Zille, a party widely perceived to represent South Africa’s privileged white minority. Yet De Lille first rose to prominence as a firebrand Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leader, clad in traditional African garb and shouting anti-settler slogans at rallies.

Praised and respected by some, feared and despised by others, who exactly is this seasoned political operator?

Born in 1951 in the small town of Beaufort West in the Western Cape, Patricia de Lille’s first political idol was her father Henry Lindt, a teacher, who she says instilled in his children pride in being African. Robert Sobukwe, the founder of the PAC, was her other hero.

De Lille started working as a laboratory technician at a paint factory in 1974, remaining there until 1990. During this time she became involved in the South African Chemical Workers Union (SACWU), serving as a shop steward before becoming regional secretary. In 1983 she was elected to the union’s national executive. Five years later, she had risen to become national vice-president of the National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU) – the highest position held by a woman in South Africa’s male-dominated trade union movement to date.

With the unbanning of the PAC and other political organisations in 1990, she was appointed as foreign secretary and relief and aid secretary of the party. She led the PAC delegation in the constitutional negotiations that preceded South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

Between 1994 and 1999, she was a member of parliament for PAC, serving as the chairperson of the transport committee and the party’s chief whip. She also served in various portfolio committees including Health, Mineral and Energy, Trade and Industry, Communication, the Rules Committee and the Codes of Ethics.

As a parliamentarian, De Lille is known for being outspoken on issues of corruption, HIV/AIDS, and abuse of women and children among others. Perhaps the most high profile case was one where she used her parliamentary privilege to play the role of whistle blower, exposing corruption in a 4.8 billion dollar arms procurement package. Accused of being “unpatriotic”, she was undeterred by death threats for publicly questioning corruption.

In her biography, she writes, “When my opponents attack me, I don’t go crying in a corner like a little sissy and say, ‘Oh you know they’ve attacked me, I’m a woman.’ I just wait for the next opportunity and return the punch. That’s how I behave in Parliament and obviously, not everybody likes it.”

In 2003 she broke away from the Pan Africanist Congress to form her own political party, the Independent Democrats. De Lille said of her new party, “We are not going to be branded communist, socialist or capitalist. We are going to be constitutionalists”.

The new party fared well initially. In 2004 she was awarded the Old Mutual South African Leadership Award as the first South African woman to form a political party of her own, campaign and win seats in national, provincial and local government.

Under her leadership, the ID has campaigned for the extension of the Child Support Grant, an increase in pensions and social grants and for better care and treatment of people with HIV/AIDS. The party also successfully ran the ‘Access to Education’ campaign, ensuring that hundreds of poor learners were not excluded from schools.

In addition to fighting for the rights of homeless children, the ID has taken five ministers to court and won the constitutional right for children not to be held in prison.

The merger between the ID and the DA has provided much fodder for political commentators and other political parties. While DA leader Helen Zille insists that “This step takes us closer to building a new majority that can win elections across South Africa,” the ANC’s Songezo Mjongile claimed that “thousands of Independent Democrats rejected de Lille’s naked opportunism to advance herself, via a merger begun less than a month after a disappointing election result for the ID. The party only managed to gain 4.5 percent of Western Cape votes and less than 1 percent nationally.

The South African Communist Party has also branded de Lille an opportunist and has accused the DA of “contriving the alliance with the ID in an attempt to extend its support among coloured voters”.

Voted the most trusted politician among coloured voters (who largely make up her constituency) in 2004, de Lille has long enjoyed respect as a formidable and principled leader. Political analysts are confident she will retain her appeal to new and old constituencies to become the mayor of South Africa’s second-largest city on May 18.