Image: Daily Maverick
Faizel Patel – 02/03/2021
Former Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane says current leader John Steenhuizen is using him as a scapegoat for what has gone wrong with the party.
Maimane is taking umbrage at Steenhuisen’s views on the 2019 election campaign.
Steenhuisen also indicated at the weekend that the DA is open to coalition talks with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) after the 2024 national elections, but only if Cyril Ramaphosa is still party leader.
The DA experienced its first general election decline in its history in 2019 and Maimane resigned soon after.
Speaking to Radio Islam on Tuesday, Maimane says the DA’s vision does not include all South Africans.
“When you don’t have a plan for tomorrow, best thing to do is blame yesterday. Frankly, when I reflect on what was written, it became quite apparent that the DA not only its plan is to be a faction of the ANC, but actually forget the fact that the project that I was leading under the DA where we wanted to build a South Africa for all is a project that they felt was wishy washy. So they are pursuing now a project where ultimately it’s a focus only on some South Africans.”
Meanwhile Maimane says his civic organisation, the One South African Movement is advancing the idea of direct elections.
“I believe that the only way we will survive is to reform the way we elect people. We can get independent candidates to stand, we can then be able to bring about the change that we need. So this is the South Africa we are working towards and I am quite excited about the prospect of bringing about that change because another political party is not going to be solution to our country.”
The DA in a statement says it will host a special broadcast on Wednesday to discuss the conversation which was recently sparked about where it stands on coalitions, the realignment of politics in the country.
Listen to the interview with Mmusi Maimane
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