TOM EATON: Patricia de Lille and the known unknowns
'When your flagship city in your flagship province has degenerated into a kindergarten and your voters are so gatvol that they’re talking seriously about the ANC, you need to act'
EXTRACT
However dirty and messy the De Lille saga is, it dwindles to almost microscopic proportions when compared to, for example, the total collapse of most of South Africa’s municipalities outside the Western Cape and that little thing called state capture. The ANC in the Western Cape is also a genuinely pathetic entity, reduced to little more than a few activists in a caravan, colouring in hand-drawn posters of motivational Facebook updates by Cameron Dugmore. In other words, the DA knows it can still get quite a lot worse before the majority of Western Capers start looking elsewhere.
Here is what we know for sure about the Patricia de Lille saga in Cape Town. 1. There exists a person named Patricia de Lille who is, at the moment, the mayor of Cape Town. 2. There is a political party named the Democratic Alliance that does not want De Lille to be mayor any more. And that’s it. I’m sure some people know more, perhaps a few dozen politicians and lawyers. But anyone beyond that group who claims to know that De Lille is either corrupt or the victim of a racist conspiracy is talking out of their hat and are, in most likelihood, either a bored fool on Twitter or a columnist trying to pay the rent.I don’t know who is lying and who is telling the truth. And so, in the absence of facts, here is what I believe: 1. The only people connected to the power struggles in Cape Town who know what they’re doing are the lawyers representing both sides. They know exactly what they’re doing, and what they’re doing is getting paid. A lot. 2. If the DA fought poverty as hard as it has f...
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