Patricia De Lille ... on trial

The “trial of De Lille” by the Democratic Alliance (“DA”) is playing out in the media. Her guilt or innocence is an issue in the court of public opinion and now, at last, before a constituted disciplinary committee, that she has welcomed.
She has welcomed it as she sees DC as her only chance at justice.

However truth and justice may yet prove as elusive as ever, given our propensity for appointing dubious adjudicators as regards “political” matters. The sham Seriti Arms Commission springs to mind. Its findings are widely regarded “as a joke”.

“The 2004 Hefer Commission - set up to investigate allegations of spying against the then head of the National Director of Public Prosecutions - turned out to be little more than a cynical exercise in personal retribution and the silencing of troublesome political opponents.”

It is therefore a truism that everything depends on which persons are appointed to adjudicate on the De Lille DC. I’m not holding my breath.

Personally, I am infused with scepticism from start to finish about the whole thing.

To be fair I will first confess a bias … a pro-De Lille bias. I first made contact with this lady when, as a head of a parastatal, I was required to report to Parliament. De Lille was on the Portfolio Committee for Transport. The sessions with her were marked by her diamond hard commitment to the public interest … from A to Z. She spared you no hiding place on this issue.

Later I had the privilege of sharing a breakfast with her in the wondrous shadow and aura of Table Mountain. I was mesmerized by the sensitive, gentle human spirit that was otherwise masked by that seemingly hard exterior. The “warrior” woman had the heart of a loving child. It was not long before her eyes welled up when explaining what terrors she and her family had been subjected to on their path to truth and justice.

And we all know who exposed the rotten Arms Deal.

So I have never had any reservations about this lady’s commitment to the public interest and her crusade for truth and social justice.  That is my bias.

That bias is augmented by my perception of politicians. I do not believe that one can be a politician and act with complete proprietary at all times. Even “Honest Abe” Lincoln, who is credited with abolishing slavery, was implicated as regards slaves and as regards bad treatment of Blacks. Our somewhat “perfect” human standards can never apply to politicians. President Barrack Obama made “mistakes”.

So I do not expect that De Lille’s conduct, as a politician, was ever completely above the board we set ourselves. Alas, we have to face the fact that they operate at a lower standard of functional integrity. It is the nature of the game. It is why Jacob Zuma is still President. It is why Donald Trump is still President.

So the question that arises is by what standard will De Lille be judged?
Will political misdemeanour(s) be elevated to political crime(s) … unforgivable political crimes?
I suspect that they will.

On this central issue there is a huge elephant in the room. You see, it is a reality that there is an agenda of control and domination at play here. It has been in the room from 1994. It is fuelled by an ideology that social justice is synonymous with Black domination to supplant White domination.

In this equation, Coloured folk are somewhat irrelevant. Blacks are “us”, Whites are “them” and Coloureds are “the others” … others on the periphery, ambivalent, irrelevant and inconsequential … like shadows. If there was ever any doubt about this, then Chief Government Spokesman, Jimmy Manyi, removed this quite emphatically in his “Coloureds are overrepresented in the Western Cape” tirade.

And the DA is fully complicit in the culture of Black domination. It is why Mmusi Maimane was selected as leader over the more mature experienced Wilmot James. James is Coloured. Coloureds are why the DA has the Western Cape. It counts for nothing at a certain point. To beat the ANC at “blackening” the WC the DA had to have Mmusi. So De Lille’s “otherness” is a certain though unarticulated problem for her.

I have real life experience of this. I was hounded out of the Road Accident Fund for my culture of commitment to truth, justice and the public interest not being seen as synonymous with Black domination.

The other elephant in the room is that of misogyny. Like America, we are deeply misogynistic, as much as we don’t realize this. It is why we can have a man with six wives, and guilty of fathering a child in an extramarital affair, as our President. In America, Hilary was held to all kinds of real and imaginary standards while Trump was held to none.

So, given all these underlying realities, it is my considered view that Patricia De Lille is up against it. No one will be more surprised than me if she survives.