THE DA has rubbished claims that senior black leaders are being purged.
At a virtual media briefing yesterday, party federal chairwoman Helen Zille told journalists it wasn’t true that six out of nine provincial leaders were facing charges.
“One provincial leader is facing charges and it is a leader who is not black,” she said.
She also dismissed speculation that leaders such as Mmusi Maimane and Herman Mashaba were pushed out of the party, saying the two were in fact begged to stay.
This comes after former Gauteng leader John Moodey last week left the party as he was facing serious charges. The party said there was evidence to prove the charges, including tape recordings.
Zille said claims that the policy conference was a rubber stamp exercise were untrue and there had never been as inclusive a conference in the party before. She said policy head Gwen Ngwenya had travelled to provinces to interact with members, who had been given policy documents and time to comment.
Ngwenya said the conference was not bogged down by discussions on racialism and redress.
“We have actually gone on an ambitious and imaginative route of saying we can have a policy that does both,” she said.
Ngwenya said any policy worth its salt needed to address economic exclusion.
“The key drivers of economic exclusions that we identify in the documents are first and foremost obviously an incapable state, which means the government does not have the capacity to deliver,” she said.
“We also look at the challenges of unemployment, poor education outcomes and the disastrous health system, which we saw was obviously not able to cope with the pandemic.
The party also unveiled the timeline for its elective conference. The internal process started yesterday and next Friday will be the final day for branch auditing of delegates.