Dual roles a huge challenge for Zille

CAPE Town mayor Helen Zille’s decision to contest the DA national leadership when Tony Leon steps down at the beginning of May could have far-reaching implications for the party – specifically whether, despite new management plans, she can combine her mayoral duties with the hefty demands of being leader.

Zille announced her decision on Thursday night, stressing that she had consulted DA and outside management experts before opting to enter the leadership race.

She will contest the right to succeed Leon with federal council chairman Joe Seremane and Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip.

However, the question remains whether it is possible to direct the required energy and attention to both positions.

While Zille’s mayoral duties are relatively clear – and they include holding a coalition together – those of the national leader are not and the demands placed on the person occupying that position are immense.

Just consider the exhausting demands placed on Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and to the hectic programme followed by Leon as an indication of what is required of the national leadership. Neither would be compatible with the duties of mayor.

Furthermore, we would point to the difficulties that could arise as a result of the creation of two centres of power, inside and outside Parliament, while a move to appoint some kind of management committee to run parliamentary affairs would inevitably bring a measure of rivalry and competition.

The result of holding both positions could well be that one or both responsibilities could be affected negatively with the consequences, specifically with regard to political control of the Cape Town City Council, little short of disastrous for a party whose strategy is to demonstrate its capacity to govern in the Mother City and employ this as a springboard from which to launch a bid to win power in the Western Cape in 2009.

It is certainly not in the country’s interests that the ANC should control every major city and provincial administration. If democracy is to be effective it demands that there should be competition at the ballot box that holds the real possibility of a change of party.

This is in the interests of transparent and accountable government.

The die, however, is now cast and Zille will contest the leadership and remain mayor of Cape Town. It remains to be seen how effectively she would be able to juggle both posts should she also become DA leader.

The pitfalls of cyberspace

TECHNOLOGY can be a double-edged sword, as illustrated by our story today about a woman facing charges of having sex with a minor and distributing pornography to children. She claims she was enticed into a lewd relationship with a man on the trendy cellphone chat system Mxit.

The man she thought was 24 turned out to be only 17, she claims. And on the flip side, the schoolboy’s friends and family were not very happy to find out he had engaged in sex and exchanged naked cellphone photos with a married woman.

Last week we reported how some university students across the Eastern Cape would willingly go without meals, transport or evenings out before going without airtime. We have also reported how Mxit – an instant cellphone messaging programme that is cheaper and quicker than SMS – is luring teens and adults into a sordid underworld of sex, treachery, pornography and infidelity.

While advancements in technology over the past 20 years are astounding and have made the world a far more convenient place, they have also opened a bigger portal for deviants.

When it comes to children using devices that can give them access to unsuitable material, it is imperative that parents are vigilant in ensuring that their children use these devices responsibly and are protected from the thousands of paedophiles and other sexual predators lurking in cyberspace.

Opinion