Cape Town - Outgoing Mayor Patricia de Lille used more than R600 000 from her pension fund in legal fees to clear her name in some of her cases against the DA - and she believes the high-risk gambit paid off.
De Lille made the revelation exclusively to Weekend Argus in a wide-ranging interview on Friday. She spoke mainly about women in power and identity politics.
“It was very high-risk, but to me it was an investment to clear my name. I grew up very poor. I’m not into luxury. I was prepared that should I not have the means one day, at least I had cleared my name. And that was an investment. But I’m not going to retire soon. I can easily make sure that I grow my pension again.”
The DA was ordered to pay the costs and the funds are going through a taxation process before she will get her money back.
De Lille spoke about the challenges she had encountered as a woman in politics and dismissed rumours she might join the EFF or the ANC. She reminisced about her relationship with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
She also shared advice about how working women should make sure that they make their husbands understood the importance of shared responsibility in the household.
Advising women in local politics, De Lille said: “If there comes a time to put up posters of yourself in the area where you are contesting, don’t rely on men to put up the posters... So we can show that we want to get in the legislatures on our own.”
The panoramic view of the city centre offered by the bigs is one of the little things she will miss after she vacates her office in October. However, what will be foremost in De Lille’s mind will be the women she has empowered through programmes around the city. She spoke fondly about them.
“In politics we deal with all the social issues in our country. And certainly women are not the panacea for all the social ills that we have in our society, but as women in politics we must also remember that politics is a game.
“And in games there are rules. You don’t find in politics that there are specific rules for women and rules for men. I think sometimes that’s where the grey area comes in. You’re in this game, but you’re looking for special rules applicable, say, to you as a woman. My advice is that if there are rules in politics, then play by the rules, so that you level the playing field for women.
“Women must remove the words ‘I can’t’ from of their vocabulary. I think women can do anything in life and sometimes they can do it better than men. What I also found is that for women to get into leadership positions in politics, you will find that political parties have structures where leadership is elected.
“You can’t put more women in (power) if women don’t make themselves available and don’t contest those positions. We’re going to the 2019 elections now. If women don’t compete with men for those positions on the lists of political parties, you are not going to get more women participating in political leadership.
“During elections, I used to tell women in the Independent Democrats that, ‘Now you have to work and you have to work damn hard’.”
She said she had an issue with the quota system when it came to women - it made men undermine women and created a perception that women were only in position of power because of their gender. “We still have to do a lot of work as women in politics.”