Pat: Opposition can go to hell

2003-04-16 20:31

Cape Town - Patricia de Lille's new party, the Independent Democrats, will hold its inaugural congress at the end of May, she announced on Wednesday.

At this congress the ID would "run democratic processes to decide on policy and elect the leaders of the party", she told the Cape Town Press Club.

She also announced the names of a 16-member interim leadership group, which she said included three HIV-positive people.

One of them, Capetonian Brett Anderson, is a board member of the National Association of People Living with HIV/Aids.

De Lille said she would encourage all ID members to adopt HIV-positive babies, as she herself had done, and said the disease would "really be priority number one of the ID".

She initiated the party last month, after taking advantage of the floor-crossing window period to defect from the Pan Africanist Congress, which she had represented in Parliament since 1994.

Other ID interim leadership members include Gauteng MPL and defector from the Democratic Alliance Themba Sono, who heads the list, Cape Town publisher Robert Stammers, two former members of the African National Congress Women's League, a University of the Witwatersrand student, several civil servants, and an artist, Thomani Makwarela.

Also on the list is a painting contractor from Hawston in the southern Cape, Yeshuo Sias, who according to a sheet of pen sketches handed out at Wednesday's event "occupies a leading position in the Khoi cultural movement".

De Little said she would be meeting Khoisan chiefs on Monday.

"They feel that they have found a home (with the ID) and they would like to work with us," she said.

At number 16 on the list is Christopher Mudau Nelwamondo, described in his pen sketch as "a former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Limpopo province" who was "previously involved with many activities in the Venda government" and "currently a businessperson involved in numerous farming projects".

An attempt by Sapa to clarify Nelwamondo's role in international affairs drew a blank when Sono's secretary declined to pass on his cellphone number and said Nelwamondo had asked that nothing be written in the media about his involvement with the ID until next week.

She said he did not want publicity "till he clears himself with the other parties he's involved with".

De Lille told the press club that the task of drawing up policy was not easy, and the party would need to consult as widely as possible to ensure it represented the views of all its members.

"The process that we have embarked on in this respect will start to deliver draft policy within the next few weeks," she said.

She also said she was going to disappoint other opposition parties.

"I am not going to fight with any of them. I am too busy building... and therefore they can all go to hell."

The time had come to break the mould of stagnant, sterile politics in South Africa.

"We want to be unpredictable. We want people to sit up and say, what is the ID going to say about this."

She said there were currently no leaders in South Africa. Instead it had rulers, people who told others what to do.

"I want to be a leader, not a ruler, I want to lead, with people moving with me," she said.

Leadership needed to be redefined in this country.

"We've got a lot of rulers who are pretending to be leaders."

- SAPA