When I heard Herman Mashaba resigned from the DA attributing Helen Zille's election as FedEx chair and the conservative faction behind her (the majority of DA members that voted for Zille after her sudden candidature), I said another resignation, especially by a senior black member, would put the nail in their coffin of any hope they had to still be an effective party and opposition, particular for black votes that ironically Zille's win scuttled. (Talking about confused, as eNCA's headline on Mashaba's resignation said, 'shooting themselves in the foot'.)
Over the past couple of days I said Zille's win was a huge mistake, that her alleged "strategic and organisational" brilliance was overstated, that she made the blunders that led to DA where it's now and she shouldn't be there (check my comments). I said her running was opportunistic, egotistical (with Zuma and Malema she has the biggest ego of all local politicians) and an indication of her refusal to go quietly into the night of retirement.
I've been right about the DA in broad terms since c2012 when I first saw where she was taken the party (who needs paid-buy-the-hour analysts?), but never thought it would be DA leader Mmusi Maimane, and Athol Trollip to boot, to leave. Maimane was not a good leader. He was weak, indecisive (leaders can't be that as President Cyril Ramaphosa is finding out), tried too hard, out of his depth and appeared to be led by a clique in the DA.
Yesterday I commented that from skimming the Leon et al report, the findings were accurate. They recommended he step down, but even if they didn't say so, others should have too.
A few weeks ago former DA counciloor and now GOOD's Western Cape MPL Brett Herron wrote in the DM about a cabal in the DA that got rid of former mayor Patricia De Lille and him. He said they wanted to remove Maimane too. He mentioned DA MP Geordin Hill-Lewis among them, who without any work experience and straight out of university Zille appointed as her chief-of-staff in 2009 (nepotism and cadre deployment is alive and well in the DA too).
Putting Herron's short memory self-serving dishonesty aside, he knows the nefarious and destructive machinations of the DA I've been warning about for years before it was fashionable. I can afford to be smug. I love witnessing the smell of fear, bile and urine ammonia that hangs over Zille, her coterie of conspirators and DA now.
I predict more resignations shall follow in the near future. I thought of people like Gwen Ngwenya and liberals like her, particularly black which the DA can't afford to lose. The DA has been captured by the right-wing element in the DA of which Zille is a recent convert.
Ferial Haffajee's article in DM today is spot on, from the headline "Helen Zille’s putsch breaks the DA", her "shock announcement to run for the position of federal council chairperson less than a month ago", and the super political action committee at the IRR "which is crafting a more conservative and libertarian direction for the DA" to to her shock that was visible to the nation on TV last night on the resignations.
Zille and IRR, which is behind her running for FedEx chair, overplayed their hands. Why do people believe she, after serial blunders with Maimane, Mazibuko, Ramphele and her black-like-me policy shift, a project Maimane and DA carried on with and got blamed by conservative white voters, is a remarkable person and politician? Perhaps she once was, but not for a decade at least. She got old, arrogant which she reeks of, and careless.
Of course, WC's conservative white voters adore her and can find no fault which is why they gave the WC another majority (the ANC was even worse, though) in th3 2019 elections. But the province is not the party's future - the national vote, of all races, is. First Zille/DA/Maimane tried to out-ANC the ANC, now with the IRR's disastrous egging they're trying to out-FF+ the FF+. They confused, trying to be all things to all voters. And the IRR's Frans Cronje insists it's still a bona fide think tank rather than agitators or the "advocacy" aka lobbyists he says they're not, which it's become.
And like what happened to the DA forerunner DP in the apartheid-era period, with a different set of circumstances, they're going to fail and lose the opposition to, God forbid, EFF as the remaining liberal voters migrate to ANC and the right-wing element to FF+ where by rights they belong, or the smaller parties.
Zille and her backers in and out the party including the IRR broke the DA. The IRR claims they're so clever but didn't see this coming. Suck lemons Helen, Frans, JKB et al and the DA's miserable and confused members.
Over the past couple of days I said Zille's win was a huge mistake, that her alleged "strategic and organisational" brilliance was overstated, that she made the blunders that led to DA where it's now and she shouldn't be there (check my comments). I said her running was opportunistic, egotistical (with Zuma and Malema she has the biggest ego of all local politicians) and an indication of her refusal to go quietly into the night of retirement.
I've been right about the DA in broad terms since c2012 when I first saw where she was taken the party (who needs paid-buy-the-hour analysts?), but never thought it would be DA leader Mmusi Maimane, and Athol Trollip to boot, to leave. Maimane was not a good leader. He was weak, indecisive (leaders can't be that as President Cyril Ramaphosa is finding out), tried too hard, out of his depth and appeared to be led by a clique in the DA.
Yesterday I commented that from skimming the Leon et al report, the findings were accurate. They recommended he step down, but even if they didn't say so, others should have too.
A few weeks ago former DA counciloor and now GOOD's Western Cape MPL Brett Herron wrote in the DM about a cabal in the DA that got rid of former mayor Patricia De Lille and him. He said they wanted to remove Maimane too. He mentioned DA MP Geordin Hill-Lewis among them, who without any work experience and straight out of university Zille appointed as her chief-of-staff in 2009 (nepotism and cadre deployment is alive and well in the DA too).
Putting Herron's short memory self-serving dishonesty aside, he knows the nefarious and destructive machinations of the DA I've been warning about for years before it was fashionable. I can afford to be smug. I love witnessing the smell of fear, bile and urine ammonia that hangs over Zille, her coterie of conspirators and DA now.
I predict more resignations shall follow in the near future. I thought of people like Gwen Ngwenya and liberals like her, particularly black which the DA can't afford to lose. The DA has been captured by the right-wing element in the DA of which Zille is a recent convert.
Ferial Haffajee's article in DM today is spot on, from the headline "Helen Zille’s putsch breaks the DA", her "shock announcement to run for the position of federal council chairperson less than a month ago", and the super political action committee at the IRR "which is crafting a more conservative and libertarian direction for the DA" to to her shock that was visible to the nation on TV last night on the resignations.
Zille and IRR, which is behind her running for FedEx chair, overplayed their hands. Why do people believe she, after serial blunders with Maimane, Mazibuko, Ramphele and her black-like-me policy shift, a project Maimane and DA carried on with and got blamed by conservative white voters, is a remarkable person and politician? Perhaps she once was, but not for a decade at least. She got old, arrogant which she reeks of, and careless.
Of course, WC's conservative white voters adore her and can find no fault which is why they gave the WC another majority (the ANC was even worse, though) in th3 2019 elections. But the province is not the party's future - the national vote, of all races, is. First Zille/DA/Maimane tried to out-ANC the ANC, now with the IRR's disastrous egging they're trying to out-FF+ the FF+. They confused, trying to be all things to all voters. And the IRR's Frans Cronje insists it's still a bona fide think tank rather than agitators or the "advocacy" aka lobbyists he says they're not, which it's become.
And like what happened to the DA forerunner DP in the apartheid-era period, with a different set of circumstances, they're going to fail and lose the opposition to, God forbid, EFF as the remaining liberal voters migrate to ANC and the right-wing element to FF+ where by rights they belong, or the smaller parties.
Zille and her backers in and out the party including the IRR broke the DA. The IRR claims they're so clever but didn't see this coming. Suck lemons Helen, Frans, JKB et al and the DA's miserable and confused members.
See here.
I can't think of any politician, except Cicero, who achieved the highest office available to him/her, retired having served his/her term(s), then re-entered politics. Even fewer must've returned within months of retiring. Except Zille and De Lille. But De Lille is an exception. She was booted out and clearly felt she had not done what she set out to do. And anyway, jilted politicians have a habit, esp South Africa, of turning up like bad pennies, overstaying their welcome having few marketable skills to earn an honest living.
Zille did what I feared she would before the May elections - not retire. I dearly hoped she would go quietly into that good night but knew her monumental ego - the biggest in SA w/ Malema (Zuma is a has been and is increasingly irrelevant) - wouldn't permit it. The signs were already there, her proclivity to tweet being one indication of her obsessive need for attention and love of the limelight.
Politicsweb's editor (James Myburgh) writes as if she has a manifest destiny to save the DA and SA from themselves. He attributes this mainly, but there may be other reasons, to the 'collapse of the Stop Zuma coalition' within the DA. Of course, PW's contributors (David Bullard, Jeremy Gordin, Mike Berger, commentators) have always been fanatical supporters of the DA and Zille, incl bf May's election when due to her imminent retirement she wasn't even a candidate. This was the loyalty she generated among her brainwashed minions, what I call 'Zille's Army'.
But unlike other commentators this week, Myburgh et al ignore the fact Zille herself set in motion what eventually became of the DA. It's the direct result of her actions, her strategic blunders and ego to believe she alone knows what's good for the DA and their now almost non-existent liberal voters and SA (on DM fan girl Teresa posted SA would be Zimbabwe if it wasn't for Zille [sic]). They expediently ignore, or excuse, her pernicious legacy she cannot be exonerated from, but in their blind spot they're determined to. It's like Zuma returning to the ANC's president job (which he and his supporters tried) claiming to repair the damage he did during his tenure, and his mouthpieces acclaiming him for that.
Their explanation is transparent, weak and embarrassing. It's cringe-inducing they feel they must belittle themselves on her behalf when in her hubris she wouldn't give a damn if they did or didn't.
It usually doesn't end well when a person - politician, sportsman, artist - who's old and beyond his/her prime tries for one more shot at the top position. She walked thin ice before, but after what happened this week she's indubitably the worst post-apartheid politician after Zuma, and a contender for the Mampara of the Year 2019.
The proposition the DA is best placed to govern in place of the dire ANC is one they themselves presented as the sole reason to support and vote for them. You make it binary and zero sum.
One of their significant problems at the moment, aside from internal race-based and personal divisions, lack of strategy and vision, etc, is they bet the house, ie their raison d'etre, on fighting Zuma and ANC corruption. But moderate Ramaphosa stole their and EFF's thunder and now they're lost. In a ST interview/profile recently Lindiwe Mazibuko said a party or politician cannot make fighting corruption their key manifesto principle, it should already be a given.
You, like the DA and their colour-blind and tone-deaf supporters (a pun, but meant generally to how they're approach everything), are arguing yourself in a corner, which is where they're at now. Their other even bigger mistake, which I've been saying for years, is that by losing their core liberal values, which are supposed to be immutable, have lost all sense of who they are and meant to be. If you define yourself by what you detest, you'll come to identify with them more than you realise. As I've said many times, the DA, Zille, members of WC and Cape Town governments, from personal experience, and certain members of the DA (many are honest and decent people, as in most organisations except ANC and EFF) became unethical, corrupt (corrupt has more meanings than money corruption) and opportunistic, with no realistic long-term destination, with little to offer voters.
I noted the liberal light, which Zille abandoned after her predecessors' courageous efforts, is nearly extinguished except for a few souls. Really, the voters don't want liberalism. I'm discouraged and disillusioned but realistic, though.
See here.
Zille's followers believe a party is one person. That's not a political party or organisation, but a cult. And many cult members have committed mass suicide, as the DA are intent are doing. The ANC is a cult, so's Zuma and EFF and Malema. Ramaphoria is a cult. Maimane attempted the cult thing but didn't succeed - lacked cultish charisma, shame. Why do you think I call Zille's followers 'Zille's Army' - bec they display all the drone-like characteristic of cult members adoring their mistress Oracle Helen.
Until Zille, the DA was a political party led by sensible, rational and stable people, not ADHD-type. They had a mission one could believe in, as I once did. That all went to shit with her self-aggrandisement and self-aggrandising plans. She was a competent administrator (unlike you I give credit where it's due) but too full of herself to know her limitations that included not shutting up about matters beyond her competence and remit. That's not excellence.
You see, when you think you're a god or demi-god or oracle as many cult leaders do, you overreach and lead your followers to their doom as has happened w/ the DA, once again proving me right and her followers wrong and very, very lost. Intervention shock therapy is indicated for these cases.
*
I can't think of any politician, except Cicero, who achieved the highest office available to him/her, retired having served his/her term(s), then re-entered politics. Even fewer must've returned within months of retiring. Except Zille and De Lille. But De Lille is an exception. She was booted out and clearly felt she had not done what she set out to do. And anyway, jilted politicians have a habit, esp South Africa, of turning up like bad pennies, overstaying their welcome having few marketable skills to earn an honest living.
Zille did what I feared she would before the May elections - not retire. I dearly hoped she would go quietly into that good night but knew her monumental ego - the biggest in SA w/ Malema (Zuma is a has been and is increasingly irrelevant) - wouldn't permit it. The signs were already there, her proclivity to tweet being one indication of her obsessive need for attention and love of the limelight.
Politicsweb's editor (James Myburgh) writes as if she has a manifest destiny to save the DA and SA from themselves. He attributes this mainly, but there may be other reasons, to the 'collapse of the Stop Zuma coalition' within the DA. Of course, PW's contributors (David Bullard, Jeremy Gordin, Mike Berger, commentators) have always been fanatical supporters of the DA and Zille, incl bf May's election when due to her imminent retirement she wasn't even a candidate. This was the loyalty she generated among her brainwashed minions, what I call 'Zille's Army'.
But unlike other commentators this week, Myburgh et al ignore the fact Zille herself set in motion what eventually became of the DA. It's the direct result of her actions, her strategic blunders and ego to believe she alone knows what's good for the DA and their now almost non-existent liberal voters and SA (on DM fan girl Teresa posted SA would be Zimbabwe if it wasn't for Zille [sic]). They expediently ignore, or excuse, her pernicious legacy she cannot be exonerated from, but in their blind spot they're determined to. It's like Zuma returning to the ANC's president job (which he and his supporters tried) claiming to repair the damage he did during his tenure, and his mouthpieces acclaiming him for that.
Their explanation is transparent, weak and embarrassing. It's cringe-inducing they feel they must belittle themselves on her behalf when in her hubris she wouldn't give a damn if they did or didn't.
It usually doesn't end well when a person - politician, sportsman, artist - who's old and beyond his/her prime tries for one more shot at the top position. She walked thin ice before, but after what happened this week she's indubitably the worst post-apartheid politician after Zuma, and a contender for the Mampara of the Year 2019.
The proposition the DA is best placed to govern in place of the dire ANC is one they themselves presented as the sole reason to support and vote for them. You make it binary and zero sum.
One of their significant problems at the moment, aside from internal race-based and personal divisions, lack of strategy and vision, etc, is they bet the house, ie their raison d'etre, on fighting Zuma and ANC corruption. But moderate Ramaphosa stole their and EFF's thunder and now they're lost. In a ST interview/profile recently Lindiwe Mazibuko said a party or politician cannot make fighting corruption their key manifesto principle, it should already be a given.
You, like the DA and their colour-blind and tone-deaf supporters (a pun, but meant generally to how they're approach everything), are arguing yourself in a corner, which is where they're at now. Their other even bigger mistake, which I've been saying for years, is that by losing their core liberal values, which are supposed to be immutable, have lost all sense of who they are and meant to be. If you define yourself by what you detest, you'll come to identify with them more than you realise. As I've said many times, the DA, Zille, members of WC and Cape Town governments, from personal experience, and certain members of the DA (many are honest and decent people, as in most organisations except ANC and EFF) became unethical, corrupt (corrupt has more meanings than money corruption) and opportunistic, with no realistic long-term destination, with little to offer voters.
I noted the liberal light, which Zille abandoned after her predecessors' courageous efforts, is nearly extinguished except for a few souls. Really, the voters don't want liberalism. I'm discouraged and disillusioned but realistic, though.
See here.
Until Zille, the DA was a political party led by sensible, rational and stable people, not ADHD-type. They had a mission one could believe in, as I once did. That all went to shit with her self-aggrandisement and self-aggrandising plans. She was a competent administrator (unlike you I give credit where it's due) but too full of herself to know her limitations that included not shutting up about matters beyond her competence and remit. That's not excellence.
You see, when you think you're a god or demi-god or oracle as many cult leaders do, you overreach and lead your followers to their doom as has happened w/ the DA, once again proving me right and her followers wrong and very, very lost. Intervention shock therapy is indicated for these cases.
See here.
Updated 30/10/2019.
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