By Mbangwa Xaba

Dr Mpho Phalatse’s unfolding public circus has nothing to do with a well-orchestrated takeover by the governing ANC. She is suffering a fate designed by the DA’s baasskap to humiliate her.
With a trivial procedural irregularity, Dr Phalatse is hopping from court to court claiming she was “unlawfully removed” from office. She tells all and sundry how “patently unlawful” the decision to hold the council meeting that kicked her out was.
This miniature technicality was tested ahead of the council sitting of 30 September that elected Dada Moreroa as the new mayor. She had approached the Johannesburg high court to stop the council meeting but the court struck the matter off the roll.
In an interview with Clement Manyathela in 702, Dr Phalatse said she was about to let Joburg be controlled by “the coalition of the corrupt”, which she reckons is commanded by a cabal whose purpose is to pilfer.
She also told Manyathela that the DA was in talks with other political parties to regroup with the aim of fighting the return of the ANC. “I will not give up the fight. This has got nothing to do with power. It was never about power. We’re still waiting for the courts to reinstate us into our rightful position of the legitimate government of this city,” Dr Phalatse told 702.
Well despite her fiery public stance green flies seem to be gathering around her political career. This might just be the beginning of an end to her political ambitions; but just to make sure, the DA white supremacy wants it to be a devastating end.
They watched as she relished power. They saw how she was captivated by its magnetism. Like an unsuspecting spider web victim, she was entangled beyond any form of autonomy.
This allure of power came with a great vulnerability. She depended on her party for survival and those who ran the party embraced her destiny with great anticipation.
They knew that her past as an open-minded novice, with slapdash behaviour where she openly chastised her political superiors, will come back to haunt her.
They couldn’t wait to serve her their revenge, but they wanted to serve it very cold. When she got kicked out of the council, the party machinery set in motion the second tremors. These are meant as a painful, public humiliation that must be drawn out for as long as it can go.
What exactly are Phalatse’s sins?

Around this time last year, then as a DA mayoral candidate in Johannesburg, she said her party scored an own goal by putting up controversial campaign posters in Phoenix, in Durban and that it must take them down. The campaign posters read: “The ANC called you racists, the DA calls you heroes” about events that took place in Phoenix during last year’s July unrest when 36 people were killed.
DA leaders, due to mounting public pressure, very reluctantly withdrew the offending posters.
Next, within days as the mayor, she goes about saying very unDA things. She described Alexandra as an important community in the city that has long been “neglected and exploited by politicians for their own gain.”
This probably did not sit well with well-heeled business people in Sandton… and the real party bosses.
“I want this township to become a place where women feel safe walking the streets at any time of the day; where the sick can access quality healthcare; where quality basic services are delivered by the City; and most importantly, the residents are economically active and empowered,” she said.
The DA wouldn’t care any less what happens to the people of Alex.
Then there was the famous public spat with the DA ancestral royalty Tony Leon. With all avenues available to him, Leon chose to address the mayor through Twitter.
“Fix potholes and traffic lights and pavements that far more than strategic planning sessions will win the allegiance of your voters,” he tweeted. Being the political rookie she is, Dr Phalatse missed the writing on the wall, she hit back: “You’re too old for this Twitter trolling behaviour of yours. If you want to contribute constructively to the rebuilding of the city please send an email to MikeMo@joburg.org.za.”
It’s funny how she misread this obvious trap. She worked with Herman Mashaba and he too fell for the same ploy from Tony Leon and suffered the same fate.
In April last year, shortly after he left the DA, in an OpEd penned for the Daily Maverick, Mashaba wrote:
“The racism I experienced in the DA was not overt. Rather, it was that less honest, covert, paternalistic, difficult-to-put-your-finger-on-it kind of racism. “It was the kind of racism that questioned why we were spending time delivering services to informal settlements when they don’t represent traditional DA voters and those who pay the rates. “It was a kind of racism that, left to its own devices, wanted me to prioritise grass cutting in the suburbs over providing people with the dignity of a toilet. “It was the kind of racism that would resist policies to address spatial inequality in Johannesburg, because “if living in the suburbs was easy, it would not be something to aspire to.” It is for this reason that he was “not DA material”, according to Tony Leon of course. We will await Dr Phalatse’s exit tag. We know that Mmusi Maimane was a “failed experiment”, Lindiwe Mazibuko was “a diva” and Mbali Ntuli was an “egotistical prima donna”.
So, when you watch Dr Phalatse make a fool of herself on the news, cheered on by the DA, just remember, this is how she is made to pay back for speaking as she pleases to the baas.