NELSPRUIT – In what the DA believes will be the first of many high-profile additions to its party, Mr Richard Lukhele officially joined it on Thursday. Lukhele, a former mayor of Umjindi Local Municipality spent 19 years in the government’s service as a member of the ANC.
The DA’s provincial leadership welcomed Lukhele at a breakfast at Jathira Guest House just outside Barberton. “It is believed that in the ANC you serve at its pleasure and when the party is not pleased, it is better to peacefully walk away,” he said.
During the course of the morning, both Lukhele and Mr Philip Minnaar, a DA councillor of the municipality who hosted the event, referred to the disagreements they had had on opposite sides in the past, but Minnaar called Lukhele one of the few mayors who had never been corrupt. “He is a mayor who stood up for his town and his people and really wanted to do service delivery,” said Minnaar.
Lukhele slammed what he called the ANC’s intolerance for dissenting views and its culture of amassing wealth. “In my case, the decision to leave was purely that this party is the one with the capacity and that is honest enough to take us to the future.”
Mr Anthony Benadie, the provincial leader, said Lukhele’s joining symbolises the beginning of a trend. “The DA is now the nucleus of the future majority party.”
Lukhele said he was looking forward to making a contribution to building the party and structures. When it was put to him that the DA may conceivably also change as it grew, like he said the ANC had changed, he expressed faith in the DA’s leaders. “They may run that risk but I believe they have the leaders.”
He also believed that it could increasingly grow from being the opposition to the majority party. “In politics you should be able to function as political leader in government and as the opposition.”
Lukhele also said leadership was not a post but a character. “You have to work at the branch lever and mobilise people to understand you. I look forward to political activism in my new political home with the DA,” he concluded.
