It is well known that Gerald Morkel did not stand for election as a unicity councillor and thus there are no democratic grounds for his candidature for mayor.

Those who were schooled in that apartheid version of democracy - that for years pretended it wore the mantle of what they called ‘one of a few Westminster democracies in Africa’ - are vociferous in their claim that the DA is being true to the electorate, who are said to have voted for a set of Tony Leon and DP truisms.

DA leaders and supporters would have us believe we are still living through the adventures of Alice in "onse land". (our land)

A number of things we have conveniently forgotten in the claims by the DA that they are true to the voters who elected them. The DP had the option of a government of unity with the NNP (in which each party retained its identity), but Tony Leon, in his poor political judgement, chose to prematurely panel-beat a merger of the DP and NNP -ie,get into bed with the NNP as a means to get power through the back door.

It backfired. The DA in the council elections did not go to the electorate for a mandate for Tony Leon or DP truisms, but rather highlighted two things that they were asking the electorate to support. Posters carried a large photograph of Peter Marais and other posters carried NNP + DP = DA.

As the DA removed Peter Marais and the NNP+DP is no more, there no justification for the DA to claim the same support they had in the election. Nobody doubts they have the support of the new right, which is highly vocal and significantly strong in proportional terms, but it is questionable whether they are in the majority in the province.

It is not far-fetched to suggest that it is now rather rich for one sector of the old alliance to say they represent the real DA voter. The only thing Gerald Morkel is probably right about is that only an election could sort out who has support for what.

No amount of rent-a-crowd meetings, slanted media reports and other forms of DP manipulation will prove the point. However, just because the DA messed things up for themselves, neither the ANC, which received the majority 42% vote in the last election, nor the taxpayer, should be forced to go to an election just one year down the line.

As I've said in a previous letter, the public are not fools. The calibre of opposition politicians leaves much to be desired. We all saw how keeping jobs and perks seemed to be the most important thing in the snakes-and-ladders episode.

Perhaps the one favour that the DA has given us is that we may now for the first time in the Western Cape be able to build Nelson Mandela’s dream. Tony Leon with his cheap politicking has done everything in his power to dismantle the work Nelson Mandela did between 1994 and 1999 in nation-building and reconciliation and has thus done a great disservice to this country.

It was laughable when one letter writer suggested that Tony Leon is comparable to Churchill and Nelson Mandela. The comparison of this man who basks in the adulation of his party faithful who call him "The leader" is more with another who promoted this type of "My leader" adulation. As the arrogant Eugene Tereblanche fell from his horse and then from politics, so too will this musketeer and his ‘bemoan South Africa under majority rule’ brand of new right politics which has found trendiness in some quarters. No amount of slurs on others can convince us that the DA has any more respect for democracy than the old order of our past.

The introduction of the dangerous newly found American trend of court-room political filibustering will also not protect them from the inevitable. Lets have less "jaw-jaw" on democracy from smart-Alec musketeers Leon, Selfe and Coetzee, and more respect for process.

There is no legitimacy for Morkel to feature as a mayoral candidate and the DA cannot claim majority support from those who elected them, now that two key factors presented to the electorate are no more. Tony Leon please stop making your problems a problem for the people of Cape Town.

Cape Town