Durban - The DA’s Dianne Kohler Barnard will remain in her position as the KwaZulu-Natal deputy chairperson pending an appeal against her expulsion from the party.
“The matter is on appeal. There is no change until the appeal is over,” provincial leader Zwakele Mncwango said on Monday.
Mncwango made the statement as the party’s national spokesman would not be drawn on past cases where members were disciplined for reckless comments on social media.
National spokesperson Phumzile van Damme said the DA’s social media policy was approved by its federal council in November last year.
“Dianne Kohler Barnard’s case was the first major infringement of the policy,” Van Damme said.
Kohler Barnard was expelled on Friday after the federal executive met to discuss findings of the federal legal commission concerning her conduct.
It found her guilty of misconduct and terminated her membership.
This happened despite her pleading guilty to misconduct, bringing the party into disrepute and contravening the party’s social media policy after sharing a Facebook post saying that the country was in a better state under the leadership of apartheid strongman PW Botha.
The expulsion came as a shock after indications in the media that the DA’s legal commission had recommended that Kohler Barnard pay a fine, attend a course on the use of social media, and that she be demoted from her post as the party’s chief spokesperson on police.
The punishment meted out on her was harsher than the one received by Marius Redelinghuys, who was removed as party co-spokesman, after he made remarks on a Facebook wall of UCT student representative council president Zizipho Pae.
Redelinghuys had made remarks after Pae commented on the US Supreme Court approval of same-sex marriages.
Independent political analyst Protas Madlala said the DA’s handling of the conduct of Kohler Barnard and Redelinghuys boiled down to the question of its strategy on recruiting black membership.
“If the DA wanted to have a strategy to win gay people, he (Redelinghuys) would have been forced to jump.
“The strategy at the moment is to penetrate as many as black voters. They even made an African the leader of the party,” Madlala said.
He also said the DA decision to expel Kohler Barnard was probably not taken lightly, and party leader Mmusi Maimane could have had a problem when it was taken.
Madlala said the Kohler Barnard saga could have haunted the DA for a long time, which would have explained its decision to cut its losses and sacrifice an individual.
“They looked at the bigger picture. This was to hurt them, so they wanted to be seen to be anti-racism,” he said.
“She is not an ordinary member. She is like a symbol of the party,” Madlala said of Kohler Barnard, whom he described as “no small fry”.
However, Madlala said the sanction was a precedent the DA would be judged on in the future.
Daily News
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