Durban - Eight months after escaping a vote of no confidence from fellow delegates in a general council, incumbent DA leader in KwaZulu-Natal, Sizwe Mchunu, faces yet another test in his political career in the party.
This time around he is facing eThekwini caucus leader Zwakele Mncwango in a potentially bruising provincial congress in Richards Bay on Saturday.
The pair battled it out in the party’s internal leadership debates in Pietermaritzburg and Durban this week.
This comes after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying and campaigning that has been taken to cyberspace with Mncwango’s theme being “United4Growth” while Mchunu’s states that “2016 and beyond I will make it happen”.
Yesterday, Mchunu would not be drawn into commenting on his ambition to be re-elected, saying the matters pertaining to the congress were “purely an internal contestation”.
“It is my responsibility to respect the image of the organisation,” he said when explaining his cautious approach in handling the coming congress.
This marks a different approach to when he was embroiled in a bitter leadership contest with Ziba Jiyane three years ago.
More recently, Mchunu has been caught up in a controversial social network lobby group that had been campaigning against Mncwango, who last week tried to push Mchunu to apologise for the WhatsApp group now under investigation by the DA.
Mncwango has left little to chance in the run-up to the congress, grabbing opportunities to state his case on public platforms.
Speaking to the Daily News, Mncwango said his vision for the party was around unity and growing the support base of the DA.
“If we are united we are more likely to grow, so if I’m elected I will make sure we are united and focus on growth,” he said. Mncwango also said he would promote open and honest contestation.
“We need to have robust debates on issues within our internal structures,” he said.
He said there was a need for a “bottom-up” approach where branches would have an input on the party’s campaigns.
Mncwango also said his vision entailed taking the party into rural areas, recruiting community leaders, revitalising the youth and women structures as well as ensuring activists felt valued within the party.
He said under his leadership in eThekwini, the party has grown immensely and he claimed that of the 490 000 votes the DA obtained in the province during last year’s election, 300 000 came from the metro.
“If one district can contribute 60 percent of votes, what is stopping us in other districts?” Mncwango said.
Daily News