Cape Talk, Thursday evening

So poorly treated by the DA. And if you look at the fact that the 2016 local government election is the biggest share of the national vote that the DA has ever got, and that was under his leadership, and yet he was considered not good enough, I mean, I think he has reason to feel a little short-changed. But he doesn't do it in the way that particularly Herman Mashaba and Michael Beaumont, and to a lesser degree, Athol Trollip do. Yes, you're right. Mussi.

Has carried himself pretty well in public, I think. He's leader of a much, much diminished and much smaller party, of course. 2016, as you correctly point out, was the high watermark of DA support. Of course, 2019 was their worst general election, which led to the end of Mmusi Maimane's leadership. It also precipitated the end of Herman Mashaba's mayoralty in Johannesburg. And also, when Mashaba left the party, that's when Michael Burton.

Beaumont and Athel Trollope also left the party. But all three of them, John, have scarring because of their time in the party. Athel Trollope lost a couple of elections against Helen Zille. He always felt undermined by Zille, even when he was parliamentary leader and she was party leader and premier of the Western Cape. Michael Beaumont was an up and coming and very talented organizer and bureaucrat within the party before he hit.

His wagon to Herman Mashaba. And let's remind ourselves that Herman Mashaba's period as mayor of Johannesburg, where I'm talking to you from, was not without controversy. It ended with Julius Malema saying that Mashaba is the EFF's mayor because he bent over backwards to accommodate the EFF simply to remain in power. Remember, he was mayor of Johannesburg, but at the head of a minority administration, a minority city government.

There was deep unhappiness within the DA back then that he was too accommodating of the EFF, that EFF people were starting to manipulate tenders. There were claims and allegations of EFF individuals being inserted into leadership positions. The DA was unhappy with that, and that led to Mashaba's departure. So the vitriol from Mashaba, Beaumont, and Trollope, I think, is multi-layered and lies in those individuals' history with the party.

More directly with Helen Zille, not so much the party. Well, Helen Zille has become a problem for all of them. You know, there's but but but also let's let's all let me also add that they've got a massive problem with Cilliers Brink, who was the mayor of Tshwane. So so they refuse to negotiate with the DA unless the DA removes both Cilliers Brink and Helen Zille as candidates for both Tshwane and Johannesburg. Now when Helen Zille came back into formal politics in twenty nineteen