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CAPE Town — DA leader Helen Zille has announced that Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele will stand as the DA’s presidential candidate in the 2014 general election.The DA and Agang SA made the announcement at a Cape Town hotel yesterday morning.
DA leader Helen Zille said she was happy to announce that Ramphele “has accepted the DA’s invitation to stand as our presidential candidate in the 2014 general election”.
“We’ve come a long way together,” she said, adding this is a “game-changing moment for South Africa”.
Ramphele said she was “honoured” to accept the invitation extended by the Democratic Alliance to stand as its presidential candidate.
“I believe this decision is in the best interests of South Africa,” she said.
Earlier, DA federal chairperson Wilmot James said the axis of South African politics will shift.
“On this day we are redefining the way in which politics will be conducted in South Africa.”
Meanwhile, Zille expressed full confidence in the party’s current parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko yesterday.
She was responding to questions at a briefing announcing that Agang SA leader Ramphele would become the Democratic Alliance’s presidential candidate in the upcoming general elections.
If Ramphele was not elected president, she would go to Parliament as an ordinary member, said Zille, adding that she had full confidence in Mazibuko as parliamentary leader.
Asked whether Ramphele’s face would appear on the ballot, Zille said she would very much like that unless a technicality prevented it.
A joint technical committee will manage the integration of the DA and Agang SA structures and volunteers, Zille said.
“This is a game-changing moment for South Africa,” she told reporters in Cape Town.
Zille said that when she was elected Democratic Alliance leader in 2007 she set out a case for the realignment of politics in the country.
“I said then that political change will come about as the old political formations become obsolete. We can see this happening now.”
She said the DA’s leadership was drawn from across the political spectrum but they shared the same values, “the belief in an open-opportunity society for all characterised by non-racialism, a market economy, human rights and prosperity for every South African”
Talks between Agang SA and the DA have been going on “continuously”, Zille said.
“The truth is we have been interacting continuously… you look at different formats, you go through different options…
“We have an agreement politically, we just need the technical details worked out.”
Zille said former president Nelson Mandela’s death had changed many things for South Africa.
Ramphele added: “I am the bridge between my generation who fought for freedom and the new generation which now needs to lead.
“The ANC is fracturing along all the broad-church lines,” said Ramphele. — News24/Sapa.
Online Reporter