Cape Town Mayor Denounces 'Power Grab'

Political allegiances follow racial lines, with whites overwhelmingly backing the Democratic Alliance and blacks overwhelmingly favoring the ANC, revered here for its role in overthrowing apartheid and for its pantheon of liberation heroes such as Nelson Mandela.

Complicating the picture are Cape Town's mixed-race residents, known here as "colored," who have less predictable political affiliations. They amount to nearly half of the population, compared with 31 percent for blacks and 19 percent for whites. The support of mixed-race voters gave Zille's party enough votes to narrowly unseat the ANC -- an unusual feat in a nation where, in most areas, black voters outnumber all other groups by such a wide margin that the party rarely loses.

Zille, who took over from an ANC mayor in March, brought an aggressive style to the office. When the ANC-controlled provincial government did not promptly pay years of overdue water and electricity bills to the city, she cut off service to the provincial legislature building for two days. She launched audits of several politically sensitive initiatives of the previous administration and, based on one of them, has threatened criminal charges against the former city manager.

Zille also has continuously criticized the ANC, which she accuses of being corrupt, intolerant and focused more on enriching a small black elite than uplifting the poor. She also says that years of thuggish behavior among ANC activists in townships -- including the destruction of homes, false arrests and the use of kangaroo courts to chase opposition supporters from their communities -- has been ignored by police, whom she portrayed as part of the ANC power structure.

"You can't believe the brand of viciousness reserved by the ANC for its opponents," she said.

Zille campaigned against apartheid, and her husband once was an ANC member. But she has long embraced the cause of opposition politics on a continent where opposition figures have been tortured, raped, robbed and killed by ruling parties determined never to relinquish power.

Post-apartheid South Africa, by contrast, has a record of clean democratic elections, an energetic press, an independent judiciary and few official barriers to political expression.

The picture looks different, however, in some ANC strongholds, opposition politicians say.

Zille said she once watched a mob destroy the home of a black member of the Democratic Alliance -- the attackers also tore the woman's blue-and-yellow party flag to shreds -- while the police remained indifferent.

Mzuvukile Figlan, one of the black party members on the city council, said that his political affiliation once regularly provoked hostility and that his mother-in-law objected when he put a Democratic Alliance sticker on his car.

Another party member, City Councilor Masizole Mnqasela, 25, said he was frequently hassled in his home township of Khayelitsha after he joined the Democratic Alliance. The trouble included several arrests -- including one made in City Council chambers -- for charges that were later dropped.

Mnqasela said that in townships, "any DA member would be harassed, would be regarded as a sellout, would be regarded as a person who is anti-transformation, anti-change."

The attacks on opposition members have decreased, Mnqasela and Figlan said. They can safely wear their party T-shirts now. Constituents often stop by the small Democratic Alliance office in a cinder-block building in Khayelitsha, looking for help.

Mnqasela and Figlan say they worry now mostly when Zille visits because, they say, there is always the possibility of a confrontation with the ANC.

The worst such incident came at a public meeting in April, when several dozen ANC activists threw chairs at Zille, hitting her several times before she escaped into a nearby car. The incident provoked a rare rebuke from South African President Thabo Mbeki, who also is president of the ANC. In his online party newsletter that week, he warned against unruly behavior.

But after the incident, Zille said, she simply drove to her next political meeting, ready to continue making the case for her party and its rare chance at power. And there is no place in Cape Town, she said, where she is unwilling to travel.

"It's not illegal to be against the ANC in this country," Zille said with a smile. "Not yet."