The scandal developing around Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille is a mess - for her and for the ruling party in the city and its surrounding Western Cape province, the DA.
The details are too many. Basically, she is accused by the DA of protecting corrupt or incompetent municipal executives and of centralising power in the city in her own office. She wouldn't be the first mayor to do so, nor the last. So what's the problem? Cape Town is very well managed and has been ever since former DA leader Helen Zille was mayor between 2006 and 2009. De Lille has done just fine, surely?
Apparently not. Here is a fraction of the charges the DA federal executive is bringing against her. The language tells you it is going for broke.
"Evidence of deep divisions within the caucus of the City of Cape Town. These divisions were shown to have been a result of the Mayor's particular leadership style which is overwhelmingly viewed as unnecessarily autocratic, divisive and misaligned to democratic principles of openness and tolerance. It became clear that this had contributed to creating a paralysing culture of fear among both elected public representatives, as well as officials in the City of Cape Town."The organisational restructuring led by the Mayor appears to have been used in certain instances to remove experienced officials in the City, with a view to replacing them with officials whose loyalty to the Mayor was prized over all else."
And so on. There's a cruel streak in the DA that likes to drag out an execution. Ask Zille. Party leaders would call it due process or "being fair", but it's more than that because, you see, the rest of us are watching too. The virtues of your internal processes may be your most defining characteristic but ordinary South Africans live in a desperate world where we want to see things happen quickly.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane himself also wants quick results when it's someone else who has to deliver them. Why, he asks, doesn't Cyril Ramaphosa get rid of Jacob Zuma now?
Getting rid of De Lille, however, will open cracks in the DA's heartland that will be difficult to close again. Following a row over the deputy mayor of Port Elizabeth, Maimane and United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa now insult each other in public, on Twitter. Holomisa is cosying up to De Lille. The brief dawn of coalition politics is under threat.
Remember, Cape Town is still the only metro and the Western Cape the only province that the DA totally controls.
Why put that at risk? Because there is risk everywhere. There's a volcano waiting to erupt in Johannesburg where mayor Herman Mashaba, a far more volatile personality than De Lille, is held in office by the good graces of the EFF, which in turn enables the EFF to wield enormous power over senior appointments and important tenders in the metro.Yet in the past year Mashaba has ruthlessly sacked two of his most able executives, Anthony Still and Rabelani Dagada, more likely than not because they stood up to him.
And for all of the mayor's spending on advertising, it is hard to see the improvements in Johannesburg under him. Cape Town may have less water, but it is much cleaner and more efficient.
Worse, for the DA, is the very real threat of an early election. It is due only in mid-2019, but the ANC may well bring it forward to around September this year. The DA simply doesn't have the policies to make a decent stab at an election in nine months. It has been painfully slow at policy development and slower still at making them part of the national conversation.
The EFF, meanwhile, has in the past few weeks strayed way off the path that was winning it middle-class support. The racism in our society is grotesque, but trashing shops for racist adverts that did not appear in Africa and scaring schoolchildren are a far cry from the principled judicial positions it has taken to corner Zuma.
So, with a combination of luck and timing, the wind has turned behind Ramaphosa as state capture is tackled and the mood of the country rises. For the ANC an early election gives Zuma the managed exit Ramaphosa has promised him and the party leadership. It unites the ANC just as the DA is fracturing and it much better aligns ANC and national leadership elections.
It's one thing to say the ANC can't afford an election. It also can't afford to wait. Right now it would win a decent majority...