Why Patricia De Lille doesn’t care what you think of her

Patricia de Lille may be sitting at a political crossroads, but the deposed Cape Town mayor insists the least of her concerns are other people’s opinions of her.

In an interview earlier this month, the former Independent Democrats leader remained calm as she fought for her political survival.

“We live in a patriarchal society. In 1990 at Kempton Park at the World Trade Centre we were in the negotiations,” she said, reminiscing on her time as a leader of the Pan Africanist Congress at the dawn of political change in South Africa. De Lille was the only female leader of a delegation.

“If you look at the media, there was a class of journalists at that time who were very objective and critical of the patriarchal society.

“But here we sit at negotiations – Joe Slovo, Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer. They will make a point and they will go ‘boom’.

“The media the next day will say so and so is making strong points.

“Then Patricia de Lille does the same and they say, ‘Oh, look how aggressive that woman is.’

“So I have learnt a long time ago in life, I don’t care what people say about me.”

De Lille lashed out at today’s politicians.

“My problem with today’s politics is that it is not about increasing the number of people that can taste the fruits of our new democracy, it is not about the people of South Africa, about attending to their problems. It’s very much about personal self-enrichment politics. It’s all about ‘me’; it’s about greed,” she said.

She lamented that even in the Democratic Alliance (DA), leaders failed to entrench the very values they swore to live by when she joined the party in 2010.

“You can go through all of the political parties, you will find there is nothing wrong with their values – the challenge is the implementation or living of those values.

“It’s just values on paper but I would expect leaders to internalise those values and to lead by applying those values.”

Love or loathe her, agree or disagree with the DA’s claims against her, one thing is for sure: the country needs strong female leaders. And De Lille certainly ticks that box.