Cape Town’s Inner Ugly
Patricia De Lille, one of South Africa's most popular post-apartheid politicians, claims she tried to redress spatial apartheid in Cape Town, but the legacy of her seven year run as mayor is one of violent forced removals and a refusal to upgrade informal settlements.
Helen Zille, Patricia De Lille and Lindiwe Mazibuko of the Democratic Alliance (DA, via Flickr).
The Democratic Alliance (DA), has governed South Africa’s Western Cape province since 2009 and Cape Town, its largest municipality, since 2006. For the majority of this time, Patricia de Lille was Mayor of Cape Town. Months of heated DA infighting culminated in the ousting of a faction loyal to De Lille. She resigned as mayor and announced her intention to found a new political party. De Lille was key to the DA, a party rooted in Apartheid white politics, repositioning itself as a party of the city’s coloured poor and working classes to build a semi-permanent electoral majority in the city and the province. Since De Lille’s departure, her allies have accused the DA of regressive, racist attitudes. They have revealed details of how local, mostly white, DA leaders opposed the development of well-located affordable housing projects, thus actively undermining attempts to redress spatial Apartheid in one of the most unequal, racially segregated metros in the world. What is De Lille’s political legacy, and is she the champion of poor and working people that she claims to be?
