{"id":7621,"date":"2013-07-23T08:24:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T08:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7621"},"modified":"2013-07-23T08:24:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T08:24:52","slug":"zille-defends-drug-user-da-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7621","title":{"rendered":"Zille defends drug user DA King"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The King’s drug of choice still illegal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

DA leader Helen Zille has defended the party\u2019s controversial decision to accept abaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo as a member, and said he would only forfeit his membership if he lost his appeal against his conviction on charges that include culpable homicide.<\/p>\n

\n

The decision \u2013 which has been widely criticised as expedient and lampooned by cartoonists \u2013 had been a \u201cpragmatic\u201d one, Zille said.<\/p>\n

\n

The king\u2019s announcement of his intention to join the DA had taken the party by surprise and confronted it with the choice of accepting or rejecting him in public.<\/p>\n

\n

Responding \u201cbelow the radar\u201d had not been an option since the king had broadcast his plan to join the party and issued a public invitation for it to sign him up, Zille wrote in her SA Today newsletter on Monday.<\/p>\n

\n

She and DA Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip had discussed the situation and decided to give Dalindyebo the opportunity to \u201creconsider\u201d after informing him of the \u201cimplications of joining the DA\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Trollip had gone to see him and spelled out the DA principles and opposition to the Traditional Courts Bill.<\/p>\n

\n

Trollip had made it clear that if the Appeal Court upheld Dalindyebo\u2019s criminal conviction, he would lose his DA membership.<\/p>\n

\n

Dalindyebo is appealing against his conviction on charges including arson, kidnapping, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and culpable homicide.<\/p>\n

\n

UCT law professor Pierre de Vos pointed out in his blog that the DA constitution said a member of the party automatically loses that membership if convicted of any offence listed in Schedule 1, 2, 5, 6 or 7 of the Criminal Procedure Act \u2013 and stressed that this included culpable homicide, kidnapping and assault \u201cwhen a dangerous wound is inflicted\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Previously, the DA had called for President Jacob Zuma, when he was the deputy president, to be fired when his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was convicted, despite Zuma himself not having been convicted of any offence.<\/p>\n

\n

But Zille said the DA had welcomed Dalindyebo because no one else who joined the party as an ordinary member was subject to an ideology test or \u201cdue diligence\u201d investigation.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

Politics involved converting opponents, \u201cnot creating impenetrable barriers to entry\u201d and the party\u2019s \u201ccore mandate\u201d was to win more votes in order to win elections \u201cso that we can implement our policies, to better serve all South Africans\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

This was \u201cpolitics in the real world\u201d, or \u201crealpolitik\u201d, and time would tell whether it had been the right choice. – IOL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DA leader Helen Zille has defended the party\u2019s controversial decision to accept abaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo as a member, and said he would only forfeit his membership if he lost his appeal against his conviction on charges that include culpable homicide. The decision \u2013 which has been widely criticised as expedient and lampooned by cartoonists … Continue reading “Zille defends drug user DA King”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[4051,4157,97,4158,532,4049],"class_list":["post-7621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-abathembu-king","tag-buyelekhaya-dalindyebo","tag-da","tag-drug-user","tag-helen-zille","tag-xhosa-king"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/dagga.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7627,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions\/7627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}