Patricia de Lille skrik vir niks. She’s always been known to shoot from the lip.
And after a long battle with the Democratic Alliance, it was ultimately her mouth that cost her her job as mayor of Cape Town and membership with the party this week.
Aunty Patty had been accused of maladministration and covering up corruption in MyCiTi bus tenders worth over R70 million.
There were complaints about her management style, that she had stirred up tensions in the DA’s council caucus.
There were even allegations that she had used R450 000 of council money to pay for security upgrades at her home.
All very serious allegations.
And she was the subject of internal and external investigations and audits.
When all of these scandals broke, one by one over the past few months, Munier was shocked to the core, and so were many others.
After all, this was Patricia de Lille they were talking about - South Africa’s most famous corruption buster, and an award-winning mayor.
But of course, talk is cheap, the public wanted to see the facts in all this konkelry.
We wanted to read the “Steenhuisen Report”.
We wanted to see the “prima facie evidence” in the Bowman Gilfillan investigation.
And like De Lille had requested, we wanted the DA to air all her dirty laundry in a public hearing - or in court.
It never happened.
REACTION: Mmusi Maimane
The DA, which prides itself on “clean governance” - and has been pushing for years to get Jacob Zuma to face his 783 corruption charges in an open court - insisted on getting rid of Patty behind close doors.
Strange. Why? What is the party afraid of?
So instead of a public hearing, the party decided to nail Patty on a statement she had made on Cape Talk radio.
The DA said she contravened section 3.5.2 of the DA’s federal constitution by giving up her membership when she publicly announced her “intention to resign” from the party.
De Lille had said she would “walk away” after she had cleared her name in court, on air.
Yep, so that is the reason she lost her job - rekking her bek.
Not corruption, not maladministration, not pocketing council money.
De Lille wasn’t as lucky as Helen Zille, who was merely suspended from the party after her tweets in which she praised colonialism.
Explaining his decision to suspend Zille, DA leader Mmusi Maimane said at the time: “Zille has continued to damage the party with various pieces of communication that seek to undermine what we are trying to achieve.”
Double standards? You make up your own mind.
Mind you, Maimane, leader or not, should also watch what he says from now on.
His public remarks that “white privilege and black poverty” must be confronted, did not go down well with the party’s executive, nor its white following.
But back to De Lille, Munier believes she should be given a chance to clear her name and defend her reputation.
Look, maybe she IS corrupt, maybe not.
Patty won’t be going down without a fight and will be dragging the party to court. Let’s hope all the facts come out in the process.