DA to hold its elective congress at the end of October, but fully online
The Democratic Alliance Elective Congress will be held using a virtual platform on 31 October despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, the party’s Federal Executive resolved at a special meeting on Saturday.
Democratic Alliance (DA) politician Helen Zille. Picture: Gallo Images/Die Burger/Jaco Marais
In a statement on Sunday, DA Federal Council chairperson Helen Zille said this was in line with the mandate of the party’s Federal Council to hold an Elective Congress this year.
To achieve this, Fedex resolved that Zille and the chief operations officer, Liana van Wyk, would prepare a detailed proposal on plans for holding an elective congress via an accessible, secure, digital platform, with systems in place to ensure that every delegate would be able to participate fully and fairly.
“This proposal will be submitted for scrutiny and ratification at the party’s online Federal Council meeting in July,” said Zille.
Since the start of the hard lockdown the DA had been busy transferring its systems to digital platforms.
“By the time we hold the elective congress, almost every major party function will be operating online, and the process of adaptation continues.”
She said their federal executive, provincial and regional executives, constituencies, the parliamentary caucus, the provincial caucuses and many of their council caucuses had moved their work to online and videoconferencing software to ensure that the business of their internal democracy continued, and that the DA represented “the needs and aspirations of voters during this difficult time”.
“The DA was the first party to run a fully online mayoral selection process recently, as well as the first ever virtual political town hall meeting in South Africa. We will be the first party to run a fully online Local Government Policy Conference scheduled for May 29, to begin the process of compiling our local government manifesto for the 2021 election.”
Zille said their biggest strength as a party was resilience.
“We are able to diagnose problems, and develop innovative solutions to them. This has never been more apparent than during the Covid-19 lockdown crisis.
“We will continue to offer South Africans coherent policy solutions as we work to reconstruct our ravaged post-lockdown economy. In order to be able to do this, our internal democratic processes must continue unimpeded.”
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