POLITRICKING | ‘A dog shampoo salesman’ – De Lille talks ‘mercenary’ comments, GOOD and Peter de Villiers

Leader of the GOOD Party Patricia De Lille says former Boks coach Peter de Villiers is appealing the organisation’s decision to terminate his membership and to dismiss him as a member of the Western Cape provincial legislature.

De Villiers is accused of sexual misconduct, with a complaint also having been lodged with the South African Police Service.

“In terms of our own constitution, we ran our own internal disciplinary procedures, where he was represented by his counsel, senior counsel, and the party was represented, and evidence was laid, and the outcome and the recommendations to the National Management Committee was dismissal, so we dismissed him,” De Lille said.

“I am not angry with him, but I didn’t trump up charges against him,” she said.

She was speaking on Politricking with Tshidi Madia, a politics podcast by Eyewitness News. 

De Lille, however, confirmed the matter is yet to be closed, as De Villiers is currently appealing his dismissal.

The GOOD leader, who is currently the Minister of Tourism, is also her party’s Premier candidate for the Western Cape ahead of the elections.

This is a province she knows well, not only having served as an MEC but also where she grew up. De Lille says theirs is a recipe aimed at trying to balance out the country, which includes addressing issues such as apartheid spatial planning in the Western Cape.

“There is a lot of unfinished business that we want to attend to in the Western Cape,” she adds.

De Lille, also hit out at the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) federal leader John Steenhuisen - who labelled her party and several others including the National Coloured Congress, RISE Mzansi, and the Patriotic Alliance as mercenaries, calling him a fool.

“He sounded like a second-hand car salesman, or a dog shampoo salesman, because that's what it used to be. And he doesn't understand how democracy works. Because he never fought for this democracy,” she said.

De Lille, who was the first woman to start a political party in the country, has changed colours multiple times, starting in the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), then launching her own Independent Democrats, which later merged with the DA, this saw her becoming mayor of Cape Town on the main opposition’s ticket.

She had a well-publicised fallout with the DA in 2018, which she says was a long time coming, in part due to the organisation representing one set of values on paper, which was at odds with what it was in reality.

“The policy says we need to do redress, we need to do reconciliation, diversity, and delivery. I was comfortable with those values. Once I started doing it… all hell broke loose,” she said.

“When I started with the unfinished bridges in the City of Cape Town, we were going to build 6,000 affordable social housing there to bring people that have been forcibility removed out of the city of Cape Town back into the city, domestic workers and other workers who work and live on the Atlantic seaboard to live there, and for the kids who go to school there, and oh… that was the biggest sin,” she added.

De Lille was accused of corruption, allegations she fought in and out of the courts. When her relationship with the DA ended, she spent a short period at home before embarking on the GOOD project.

“I said to myself, no, I still want to make a contribution to this country. I love this country. I'm a patriot, I want to see my country succeed. But you need a vehicle to be participating in the political system,” she said.

GOOD currently has two seats in Parliament and is hoping to grow its support. De Lille said coalitions were only a conversation that would entertain post-ballot.