DA leader Mmusi Maimane has been cleared of wrongdoing by an internal party probe by party’s finance committee which found “there exists no financial illegality on behalf of Mr. Maimane as it pertains to both the house and the car”.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane appeared to have given a faction that wants to unseat him an easy ride – a Toyota Fortuner donated by Steinhoff, the company at the centre of South Africa’s largest corporate fraud in recent history.

Even after the company collapsed when its CEO Markus Jooste’s house of cards came falling down in December 2017, Maimane kept driving the car while his party criticised the multiple frauds it visited on pension funds.

That story came hot on the “wheels” of another report in the Sunday title Rapport: Maimane was living in a home owned by a trust and it’s unclear if he pays rent on it, according to the title.

Maimane said neither was true.  On the car: “It’s utter hogwash,” he told the Daily Maverick. “I hardly used the car. I was not in the Western Cape (for most of the time).” Dion George the party’s federal finance chairperson said it was true that the car had been returned when the Steinhoff scandal broke and any delay in that return had been because Maimane had been in the US and was mostly based in Gauteng.

On the house, Maimane said: “I am a political principal, my assets are available for any legal pursuit (like a damages claim). For any CEO, if you are in a public space, you have a trust which is declared and a business which buys assets on your behalf, so your assets are not in your name. It’s to protect my children…our trusts own assets for which I have raised capital. Call 10 CEO’s and ask how they have structured their finances and it’s the same mechanism.  It’s all listed in my declarations,” said Maimane.

George cleared Maimane on the house too and said the party leader had provided evidence of paying a R450 000.00 deposit on the house and that he had paid rent from April 2018.  The Claremont, Cape Town house was bought in 2017 and he started paying rent of R18 400.00 a month in April 2018 once it was transferred.   

Maimane in an earlier interview with the DA said “I have always invested in property,” and attributed the release of details about the car and the house to “those opposed to change in the DA. I am a big boy and fighting for a more inclusive DA,” as opposed to those who wanted the party to become a “Freedom Front lite”.

The Freedom Front Plus is eating into the DA’s white support base with its more forthright stance against affirmative action, for land and property protection with its slogan “Slaan terug” or Hit Back which has resonance with the DA’s “Fight Back” motto which saw it grow from 1999 onward to becoming a significant party rather than a marginal one.

Four run for federal council chair

Meanwhile, the party announced on Friday 4 October that four candidates had put their hats in the ring for the position of DA federal chair.

In a surprise move, former party leader Helen Zille quit her new job as a fellow of the Institute for Race Relations to run for the post alongside Athol Trollip, Mike Waters and Thomas Walters.

Zille said in the statement said: “In recent months, the DA has been through a period of turmoil and distress. As a party it is important for us to reflect, to introspect and begin the process of reconnecting with voters. She said that if successfully elected, she would support the party leaders to “getting it back on track”. Declaring her love for the DA, Zille said: “South Africa cannot succeed unless the DA succeeds. I am prepared to work hard and play my part in saving our democracy.”

Background

The DA has promised a paradigmatic shift in public service and against corruption – it’s there in every position the party takes and it is the longest section in its election manifesto published ahead of the election this year. 

South African political leaders earn good salaries and the DA gets healthy funding from corporate and other donors, both in and outside South Africa.  The allegations against Maimane paint him as a leader who live large and to be a rentee to private interests in his personal life – a pattern that resonates with revelations of how leaders of the ANC and EFF have lifestyle sponsors and which the DA has always promised to model in the opposite.

And in the two cities that the opposition party won in the 2016 local election, the patterns of micro state capture mimic the patronage rents that ate away at South Africa under former president Jacob Zuma.

The Daily Maverick and amaBhungane have in the past month exposed how tender procedures in the Johannesburg council and the Tshwane council in Pretoria where the EFF ran roughshod over tender systems to fund its lavish lifestyle. This throws shade on the DA’s promise of running clean local governments – the key reason the party won those cities and which put Maimane on a fast track to play a bigger role in South Africa.

Now those dreams lie shredded in tatters as Maimane faces an open and hostile attack by a liberal faction of the DA which wants him out. This faction wants to return the DA to a purer liberal agenda that opposes black ownership empowerment and the more progressive social democratic direction Maimane has pushed the party to and one in which black leadership is more manifest than at any time in its history.

“The DA can’t become a puritan Ayatollah of liberalism,” says Maimane, adding “We have to broaden the DA base.”

Poor election performance has weakened Maimane

The DA leader is not helped by the fact that the party’s national campaign flaked out this year and he returned it to parliament on a lower percentage than the previous election and polled way under what the DA’s strategists had hoped for ahead of the June election. The party put all into winning Gauteng and even moved its headquarters to Johannesburg; it came nowhere close to taking the heartland province. Now its poll showing is being dissected by a team including former strategist Ryan Coetzee and former leader Tony Leon – an investigation that is weakening Maimane because it has created a second seat of power.

Maimane’s adversaries have smelt blood and they want to take him out; he says the allegations are baseless. His allies in Gauteng like provincial party leader John Moody and Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba have come out swinging for him, calling the campaign a “smear” and a “coup” attempt.   

But the party is now facing a difficult local government election in 2021 and a real risk of losing its gains of 2016 (as by-elections are showing) because it appears to have lost its way on its promise of governing differently and without sleaze. DM