Patricia: New ID for SA

2003-03-26 21:40

Cape Town - Fiery MP Patricia de Lille says she is quitting the Pan Africanist Congress to launch a new political party, to be called the Independent Democrats.

"I'll be the new ID of South Africa," she said.

Her announcement, made in Cape Town on Wednesday, ends weeks of speculation on her political future in the wake of reports - which she denied - that she believed the PAC was dead.

De Lille said she had been wooed by all three major opposition parties, as well as by former Western Cape premier Peter Marais, currently facing disciplinary charges in the New National Party.

One senior NNP member had even promised her the premiership of the Western Cape, along with a name change for the party, should she defect.

"And really... I couldn't find a home that would give me what I want to achieve, my vision for this country.

"I want to add value to the growth of our country, to the future of our country, and the vision of our country, not just be a Chihuahua," she said.

"The whole theme of this party is to bring hope. I don't want us to lose hope. We've got a lot going for us."

'Not a Chihuahua'

She said she believed the new party could secure five to 10% of the vote in the 2004 general elections, the higher figure translating to some 20 seats in Parliament.

The current two-week floor-crossing window allows her to quit the turmoil-ridden PAC - for which she has been an MP since 1994 - without losing her seat in the National Assembly.

De Lille, 52, said politics in South Africa had become stagnant and sterile.

Opposition parties were obsessed with the idea of numbers, and trying to muster enough mass to challenge the African National Congress.

This was neither necessary nor practicable.

What was needed was quality, not quantity, and an opposition that was not fixated with merely being anti-ANC.

"I think there are a lot of ways and means you can be a different opposition than what you have now," she said.

"Not being a Chihuahua, but add value to what government is doing now."

Quizzed on ID party policy, she said she and her advisers were "still developing it", but that she saw no need to "re-invent the wheel".

In opposition

The party would accept that it was in opposition, and that the ANC was in government.

It would not come up with alternative policies on issues such as the economy and health merely for the sake of offering something different.

Asked where the party stood in the political spectrum, she declined to give it an ideological label. "I don't believe in any -isms," she said.

De Lille, who played a prominent role in last year's Constitutional Court challenge to the defection legislation, denied she was being inconsistent by taking advantage of the law now.

"The way I look at this, it's not compromising my principles or anything.

"But I'm looking at it as an opportunity that's only going to come once before the 2004 elections, an opportunity I can use to make an impact... on my country.

"Of course, I'm not jumping from one party to another, I'm jumping from one party into the unknown."

De Lille, who has differed sharply from the PAC stand on issues including Zimbabwe, said the party leadership knew of her decision, and that there was no animosity.

Not a politician, a priest

A former trade union leader, she said she still regarded the PAC as her "home", and treasured the mentoring in pan Africanism she had received there.

However she believed it was best that she "give way" so she did not cause any further division in the party.

"The grounding of the PAC is solid," she said. "It's unfortunate that with slogans, it's being misdirected away from the truth, away from the basic documents."

Asked about Bishop Stanley Mogoba's shaky leadership of the party, she said the problem lay not with him, but with the rest of the PAC.

"We are trying to make him what he's not," she said. "He's not a politician, he's a priest."

De Lille said the new party would probably be officially launched within the next two months.

She described as "nonsense" reports that she had managed to poach three Inkatha Freedom Party MPs and two each from the United Democratic Movement and the African Christian Democratic Party.

However she had been overwhelmed at the number of other people coming forward to offer support.

According to the Independent Electoral Commission, she has four months from the April 3 end of the window period in which to register the new party.

- SAPA