George’s Figland: Will the DA take another 955 days to kick him out?

RAYBIN FIGLAND is finally no longer the DA's deputy mayor of George. After appearing confident at the start of Thursday's council meeting, he resigned from his position just before a motion of no confidence was to be put to the vote.

He presumably realised it would have been adopted because his own party supported the motion brought by the Good party. This brings a chapter of the saga to an end, one that took 955 days to complete, in what should have been a routine action against a DA office-bearer who once admitted to blackmailing a schoolgirl (of age, as DA leadership structures hasten to qualify) over sexually explicit photos of herself she had sent him. It might still not have happened if the Good party had not tabled the motion against him. The DA will now have to decide what to do with him.

Good's motion was initially not given much of a chance of success. The DA coalition controls the council, albeit with a paper-thin majority thanks to a single ACDP member, and Figland was also supported by certain opposition members who could have abstained or voted against the motion.

DA caucus in crisis

The DA caucus was in crisis on the eve of the vote. An internal motion of no confidence against Figland was delayed for too long, which for procedural reasons meant it could not be completed before Thursday’s council meeting. There was and is no consensus within the DA caucus on whether the party should vote with an opposition party and against one of their own members at a council meeting. As one member put it on Monday night: “We now have a shit show on Thursday.” Another expressed his frustration: “We wanted to proceed [on Tuesday], but Helen shat all over Jacky [executive mayor Jacqulique von Brandis].”

It was then decided to vote against the Good motion but then immediately afterwards pass an internal motion of no confidence in the caucus against Figland, but this would have created a new problem: Figland could point out to the caucus that the same people who had just voted against the motion now wanted to do the exact opposite.

The only option left that would still get rid of Figland was for the DA to support Good's motion, but that would require special permission from the DA's federal executive committee (the FedEx).

Helen Zille, the DA’s federal chair who is also chair of the FedEx, submitted the matter for a decision, and warned members that a vote to retain Figland simply because support for an opposition motion would be intolerable, “would wash very badly with the public”. The FedEx then gave permission to the George caucus late on Wednesday afternoon to support the Good motion. The DA caucus could therefore vote in favour of Good’s motion of no confidence on Thursday, making Figland’s removal possible.

The DA can now kick Figland out of the party, because he is a proportional council member and the termination of his membership does not conflict with any provisions of the DA's constitution.

But will they?

There was no urgency to act against Figland from the start, to put it mildly. From the time DA office-bearers were first formally informed of the allegations, 540 days passed before a complaint was lodged with the party’s “tagging committee”; then another 142 days before Figland was finally suspended – and then only from party activities and for fear that he would interfere with witnesses; another 18 days before he was charged internally; a further 61 days before the disciplinary hearing began; another 45 days before the hearing was concluded; and another 161 days before the DA’s federal council finally accepted the decision of the DA's Federal Legal Council (FLC): “We find the accused member not guilty of the misconduct alleged in the charge sheet.”

The DA’s federal leadership cannot escape a critical question: Why did it take almost three years to get to this point? Why did the party’s George caucus only take action against Figland on Monday night, 952 days after Figland’s victim first reported him to the police? This is the same caucus that on July 25 accepted the  George speaker’s investigative report into Figland’s alleged sexual exploitation – a report that was so accommodating of Figland's version of events that the DA whip tried to change it before the FedEx mandated that it be accepted.

Violated trust

The real reason why the George caucus finally took action against Figland had more to do with concerns for their own popularity than principle. The DA mayor of another council in the region tells me that their impression was that the George caucus members simply could not stand the public resentment against Figland any longer, and that the public had begun to blame them for their continued inaction against the deputy mayor. Unlike the party’s federal leadership, ordinary caucus members had to be among the people of George without the luxury of distance and comfortable offices to hide in.

Another possible explanation is that the ordinary people who make up the George caucus relied in good faith on the FedEx and the federal council to provide leadership and come to a proper decision. It is clear that the DA leadership violated this trust.

In any case, the question then becomes: How will potential DA voters respond in the next election to a party where moral clarity is overshadowed by political and personal considerations?

♦ VWB ♦

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