Cape Town - Mayor Patricia de Lille has been made an offer to move to the Western Cape provincial legislature to take up a vacant position created after the exit of Lennit Max.
She could possibly head one of the portfolio committees.
The Weekend Argus has learnt from highly placed sources that the offer was made to De Lille as part of the agreement reached this week which led to the withdrawal of the motion of no confidence against her by the DA caucus in the City of Cape Town.
According to the sources, De Lille has been given until the end of next month to consider the offer.
However, the disciplinary processes against her would still continue, as per the new agreement, and these are scheduled to take place over three days next month.
The dates have yet to be announced.
The agreement brokered with De Lille apparently involved DA leader Mmusi Maimane, deputy chair of the federal council Thomas Walters and member of Parliament and former Independent Democrats secretary-general Haniff Hoosen.
De Lille confirmed the involvement of Maimane and “other management committee members”.
DA national spokesperson, Solly Malatsi would not comment on the reports, choosing to confine himself to the announcement of the deal.
“I don’t respond to rumours. There have been ongoing conversations with De Lille. What matters now is that there’s an agreement,” Malatsi said.
But while De Lille would not confirm the offer of a move to the provincial legislature, she said her political career had never been about positions.
“I’ve constantly said that I can serve the country in any capacity,” she said.
She rejected the suggestion that the time frame of the agreement she had reached with the DA was until the end of next month.
“There’s nothing that says the end of August. The process will follow the DA’s constitution. But I have given Maimane my commitment to a fair and speedy process.”
According to the sources, the agreement reached with De Lille on the motion of no confidence took the DA caucus members by surprise.
“Many of the caucus members were not happy about it. But when Maimane was approached he was able to pacify them,” one source said.
Another said the DA caucus was confident that the motion of no confidence against De Lille would have succeeded on the basis of numbers.
“Also, the ANC had been defeated in its own motion against the speaker, Dirk Smit, even though it had relied on support from those regarded as pro-De Lille. So they wouldn’t have supported them as well in the DA motion,” she said.
The DA’s protracted battle with De Lille goes back more than a year. It is one among other factional battles in its local government leaderships around the province, which also include Knysna and George mayors facing the axe.
Ipsos’s latest poll indicates the DA could potentially lose 9% of its support in next year’s general election, taking just 13% of the vote.
Reports surfaced yesterday that when De Lille won her case against the party in May, Maimane had been in London fundraising for the party’s election campaign, but funders had been unhappy about the De Lille saga.
Political analyst Professor Somadoda Fikeni said the DA had no choice but to come up with the agreement to break the impasse with De Lille.
“It might have been stung by a wide range of criticism by its own veteran members and the public on how clumsily it had handled the De Lille issue,” Dikeni said.
“They had also embarrassed themselves by refusing to open the disciplinary process as they always claim to be a transparent party and had insisted on the ANC to be transparent.”
Fikeni said next year’s elections and the “rebellion” by mayors in some Western Cape municipalities had also contributed to the about-turn in the DA position.