Patricia de Lille’s belittling lecture (“Let the good times roll”, Daily Maverick, 22 November) to Western Cape voters for voting for the Democratic Alliance to “keep out” the ANC is entirely consistent with her history, and gives a clue to how her party will act in future.

Why wouldn’t voters want to keep the ANC from winning in the Western Cape? Unlike De Lille, Western Cape voters see the ANC for what it is: irredeemably corrupt, with a record of destroying every public service or major state entity it controls. In contrast, voters’ choice of the DA has yielded unmistakably better and cleaner government, with better healthcare and education, and wider opportunities for all. 

Instead of standing up to the ANC and helping to beat it, Patricia de Lille has thrown her lot in with it. Again.

Last Friday, Parliament debated (and passed) major budget cuts to various basic and essential services in order to fund a R10.5-billion bailout of South African Airways (SAA).

These deep cuts included slashing budgets for the building of new schools, for the construction of new water infrastructure, for the eradication of pit latrines in rural schools, for the installation of standpipes in poor communities, and a more than R680-million cut to the public health budget. All of this to fund a failed airline. 

No government with any sense of duty and care to the public would ever propose such cuts. Of course, opposition parties opposed this very strongly, and all serious opposition parties voted “against”. All, that is, except GOOD, which voted with the ANC to pass these immoral cuts to fund SAA.

Without the GOOD party, the ANC would have had a harder time. With GOOD, the ANC’s wrecking of South Africa is made easier. 

In 2006 De Lille destroyed the Independent Democrats, the orange-clad party she headed at the time, by siding with the ANC in the City of Cape Town. Voters abandoned the ID overnight, reducing the party to a tiny fringe in a matter of months.

De Lille now leads another orange-clad reincarnation of the ID, and history is repeating itself. 

De Lille is choosing the ANC over the voters again. She sits in an ANC Cabinet, and supports indefensible ANC proposals in Parliament. 

For De Lille, it’s not the interests of voters that count – it’s whatever pays her bills.

She always supports what is good for her, and not what is best for the voters.

Since joining the Cabinet, her department has become a national embarrassment. An investigation into her now-infamous “washing line” border fence revealed that her department overpaid by R18-million. It also found significant irregularities and inappropriate interference in the supply chain process by De Lille. The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) is now investigating whether any crime was committed.

GOOD is also threatening to hand the Western Cape back to the ANC on a platter. On 9 December, there will be three by-elections in Oudtshoorn, in wards that have always been tightly contested between the DA and the ANC. In fact, in two of the wards (4 and 10), the ANC got the most votes in last year’s national election. In all of these wards, the only likely consequence of GOOD contesting is to guarantee an ANC victory. That is definitely not what GOOD’s voters want, but it is exactly what GOOD is going to do.

De Lille writes that “voters are not easily fooled”. Indeed! Soon voters will see what is going on here, and will do to GOOD what they did to the ID in 2006.

The message to voters is clear: Vote GOOD, get the ANC. And if you want to keep the ANC out of your town or province, only the DA can do it. DM