The DA has suffered another resignation of a black leader, this time former MP Patricia Kopane, who quit the official opposition party on Monday.
In a statement on Monday, DA Free State leader Roy Jankielsohn said: “The DA has received and accepted the resignation of Patricia Kopane as an MP and from the party. We thank Patricia for her service to the DA and the role that she played in parliament.”
Kopane’s exit is the latest in a series of resignations by prominent black leaders in the DA, which includes Makashule Gana, who resigned two weeks ago as member of the party and Gauteng legislature, citing a trust deficit between citizens and political parties.
Speaking to Business Day on Monday, Kopane — who spent nearly two decades in the DA and served in senior roles including as DA Free State leader, provincial spokesperson, councillor and shadow minister for social development, health and public works — declared: “I’m a free woman.”
She characterised the DA as no longer serving her political interests, saying: “The DA is no longer the vehicle it was when I started the trip; it’s got other drivers now who are derailing the car from getting to the destination that we want it to go.”
Kopane said she would address a media briefing on her reasons for resigning from the party on August 31.
Other leaders of the official opposition party who have left include former KwaZulu-Natal MPL Mbali Ntuli, former MP Phumzile van Damme, former leaders Mmusi Maimane and Lindiwe Mazibuko, former Johannesburg mayor and now ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba, former Gauteng leader John Moodey, former Midvaal mayor Bongani Baloyi and now ActionSA member, and former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, who is now leader of the GOOD Party.
Mashaba served only three years of his five-year term as DA mayor from 2016. He quit the DA and announced his resignation as Johannesburg mayor in October 2019 and went on to form his political party, ActionSA. His resignation followed the election of Helen Zille as the DA’s new federal council chair, with Mashaba saying at the time that Zille’s election was a victory for people who stood diametrically against his belief systems.
In a subsequent interview with Power 98.7 later on Monday, Kopane said: “The DA, now they are obvious, they can’t hide any longer, they have become a white party. With the history that I come from, with the hard-earned democracy that we all fought for, I realise this is no longer the party I joined ... so I have to leave.”
Kopane later told Business Day that she might consider joining Mashaba’s ActionSA because “they have been pursuing me for a very long time. They are really looking forward to [having] me as a member, but I will explain everything during the media briefing at the end of the month.”
In a statement on Monday, Mashaba said: “Since Patricia Kopane’s resignation this morning, I have called her and personally signed her up as a member of the party and will set up a meeting with her to explore the open declaration and interest in joining ActionSA, and forming a mutual relationship for the benefit of the people of SA.”
He described Kopane in glowing terms, saying she had been an “asset to the politics of the Free State and is an ethical leader whose skills, experience and background would make her contributions invaluable to ActionSA”.
Despite the resignations, DA-led multiparty coalitions are running the Gauteng metros of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane, courtesy of a significant decline in the ANC’s national electoral support to less than 50% — for the first time since 1994.
Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said the elephant in the DA’s room was that the party struggled with nonracialism and embracing black leaders, “which should be a strategic area of growth for them”.
“The party is struggling with that. This is a country where blacks are in majority and if your party doesn’t seem to show that kind of demographic, that should be a concern,” Mathekga said.
He criticised the DA for being “very casual” about the mass exodus of black leaders from its ranks, saying: “This is a complex issue and the question is, how do you build a political home for those black leaders? The party keeps bleeding numbers and figures are showing that these leaders take a little bit of DA soul with them when they leave.”
The DA’s national electoral support fell from the 26.9% achieved in the 2016 municipal elections to 21.66% during the local government elections in November 2021.
Update: August 15 2022
This article has been updated with new information
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