Durban - A showdown is looming in the battle for the leadership of KwaZulu-Natal between DA provincial leader Sizwe Mchunu and the party caucus leader in eThekwini, Zwakele Mncwango.
The party’s provincial congress will be held in about five months and DA insiders, who want Mncwango to replace Mchunu, are calling the congress “the battle to save the DA”.
Others said out-going national youth leader Mbali Ntuli was their preferred candidate to lead the party in KZN for the 2016 local government elections. And if she was not the leader, she should at least be the deputy.
On Sunday Mchunu hit back at “faceless sources”, saying their information lacked credibility. He said instead of talking to the media they should raise their problems within the party.
Mchunu said when he took over as leader of the provincial DA he had produced a strategic objective document on how it could become the official opposition in KZN.
“We achieved all those objectives, including replacing the IFP as the official opposition. Even before the elections we had grown to more than 246 000 members, and we are now at half a million.
“The DA has grown in all communities,” he said.
Mncwango, who is in the US for leadership training, said recently he had been approached to challenge Mchunu during the coming congress.
Although he denied having ambitions for the top job in the province, he said he had grown the party in Durban and it no longer focused solely on “rates and bills”.
Mchunu’s deputy is Francois Rodgers; Haniff Hoosen is the chairman and his deputies are Mncwango and Dianne Kohler Barnard.
Mchunu’s critics said he had failed to attract black support in the Midlands - where he comes from.
“The party has grown because of the death of MF leader Amichand Rajbansi, whose Indian supporters, longing for a stable political home, moved to the DA,” said a source.
Mchunu came to power after beating then former IFP national chairman Ziba Jiyane during a DA conference in Ladysmith in 2012. Jiyane has since disappeared from politics.
Ntuli was quick to distance herself from talk of a leadership battle.
“I have not thought about that issue because I am facing so many problems,” she said.
The Mercury