No top DA jobs for African blacks

2010-07-25 22:09

Michael Hamlyn

Cape Town -The Democratic Alliance's federal congress has failed to elect a single black African candidate to any of the three posts as deputy federal chair of the party.
 
Wilmot James was elected unopposed without a vote as federal chairperson, replacing Joe Seremane who goes into retirement.

Anchen Dreyer, an Afrikaans-speaking white woman from Gauteng, Dianne Kohler-Barnard a heavy-hitting white woman from KwaZulu-Natal, and Ivan Meyer, who is coloured, and Western Cape minister of social development, were all elected to be James's deputies.

Among the six who were rejected by the delegates were one white woman, one other coloured man and four senior black Africans. They were Sizwe Nchunu, the deputy party leader in KwaZulu-Natal, MP Sej Motau, Khume Ramulifho who has just left the post of DA youth leader, and Bonginkosi Madikizela, the Western Cape's housing minister.

"The fault is not with the party leadership," said one prominent member of the party.

"The people you should blame are the rank and file DA members, many of whom came from the National Party under Marthinus van Schalkwyk's leadership, but stayed on after he left to join the ANC."

Despite having heard the result of the election, the party leader Helen Zille, the premier of the Western Cape, said in her address closing the congress that no complex plural society has ever been able to transcend the racial barrier. "We shall be the first," she said.

She was so confident of this that she identified a major "tipping point" in the near political future among black voters as they learn to trust the DA.

"Many analysts say that we shall never build a new majority," she said.

"WE will show them, won't we?"

- I-Net Bridge (News24)