Durban - Former DA leader, Tony Leon has come under a barrage of criticism from within his own party after telling a gathering of DA members that newly elected ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa was a "game changer" for South Africa and that the party must get behind him.
His comments drew the ire of KZN DA leader, Zwakele Mncwango and DA MP, Hannif Hoosen who both took to social media on Tuesday to slam Leon.
Hoosen, who was the DA eThekwini mayoral candidate for the 2016 local government elections shared a cut out of the article on his Facebook page that appeared in The Mercury on Tuesday with a caption that said, "Are you kidding me
Mncwango, who is contesting the KZN DA leadership position responded to Hoosen's Facebook post by saying that Leon must join the ANC if he believes so much in Ramaphosa.
"Ramaphosa is part of the ANC leaders who
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Speaking in Chatsworth, south of Durban on Monday night, Leon told a handful of his party's supporters that he sees ANC president Ramaphosa as a game changer in South African politics.
He threw his weight behind Ramaphosa telling the supporters of the main opposition party to support the new leader of the ANC in his campaign to clean South African politics of corruption experienced under President Jacob Zuma’s administration.
Leon had been invited to campaign for DA MP Dean Macpherson who is contesting against KwaZulu-Natal MP Francoise Rodgers for the provincial chairperson position.
The party will hold its provincial conference next week, where provincial Mncwango will be looking to retain his position.
However, Leon said he would rather not be involved in the party contestation, and opted to talk about the current state of the nation and Ramaphosa’s leadership.
“Cyril Ramaphosa’s election has been a game changer for everyone, for the country, for our economic fortunes and indeed the DA will have to up its game because Ramaphosa is
He said Zuma should vacate the state office because two centres of power
“Ramaphosa is absolutely a challenge to the DA. The DA should actually be very open and generous towards Ramaphosa, and say to him ‘you have brought a huge change, and we saw it on the weekend with (the new) Eskom board,” he said.
He said the DA should be delighted with Ramaphosa’s fight against state capture, and the reconstitution of the Eskom board.
“They (DA) should say to him ‘we are gonna support you. Whenever you do things like that we will be thousand percent behind you, but if you deviate from the path you offered we will be your biggest enemy.
“But we have to start off by recognising that there is a big change in the political weather, and when that hurricane comes your way you must change tactics (as opposed to) when there was drought. Ramaphosa has renewed people’s hope although it is very early days,” he said.
He said under Zuma the country was going off the cliff, and he suspected that if former AU Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma had been elected to lead the ANC, the situation would have continued in the same route and would have caused national destruction.
“We as South Africans, as DA members and other opposition need to be supportive of the fact that we got a much better person because we want a South Africa that works for everyone.
“I have the highest regard for Jabu Mabuza who had been appointed as the chairman of Eskom, as he is a stringent critic of state capture,” he said.
He said South Africa should celebrate the appointment of Mabuza as this mean a deviation from the road that had taken Eskom to cronyism, corruption and 'Guptarisation'.
He said instead of focusing on attacking the ANC for corrupt leadership “which might no longer be there in the future”, the DA should focus on cleaning its administration in Cape Town, and also campaign against ethnic hatred at Hoërskool Overvaal in Gauteng which is stopping non-Afrikaans speaking pupils from enrolling.
“They (DA) need to change journey
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