DA MP sacked for ‘kitchen canvassing’

Tsepo Mhlongo among four leaders fired after facing various charges

● DA MP Tsepo Mhlongo — the party’s shadow minister for arts, sports & culture — has been fired from the blue party after he was found guilty of plotting to defraud DA electoral systems.

Well-placed officials told the Sunday Times on Friday that Mhlongo was booted out of the party following a disciplinary process after he was found to have cooked the books, apparently in an attempt to boost his chances of making a return to parliament.

Mhlongo is among four DA leaders — from Gauteng, the Northern Cape and the Eastern Cape — who were kicked out of the party after they were found guilty of a variety of charges. This comes as the DA is conducting a process to select its next cohort of MPs ahead of the 2024 elections.

“The guy was basically found guilty of kitchen canvassing, which is fraudulently inflating canvassing statistics of [a] constituency for it to be seen [to be] performing. It affects the list process,” said a top DA insider, who asked not to be named because the details of Mhlongo’s axing were meant to remain confidential.

The decision to expel Mhlongo was endorsed on Thursday night by the DA federal executive, a structure comprising all the party’s provincial and national leaders, including party chief John Steenhuisen and federal council chair Helen Zille. The federal executive was presented with a report compiled by the DA’s federal legal commission.

Mhlongo was the head of one of the DA’s Soweto constituency offices and was fired along with his co-ordinator, who was found to have cooked up the scheme with him.

“As the constituency head, he stood to benefit because [the inflated] canvassing statistics would have suggested they [had] perform[ed] in terms of their key performance indicators ahead the selection process,” said the insider.

The move has cost Mhlongo a cushy R1.2m-a-year job and taxpayer-sponsored benefits, such as free flights between Cape Town and Gauteng, cellphone and car allowances, and other fringe benefits.

Mhlongo yesterday said he still considered himself a DA member.

“I’m still a member and I’m following internal process of appeal and will comment after I’ve received a letter from the party for termination of my membership.”

DA national spokesperson Solly Malatsi said the party frowned upon electoral fraud. “This is serious misconduct and, once found guilty [of] that, automatic cessation is the sanction,” said Malatsi.

Former DA leader Nqaba Bhanga, who previously served as the mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, has also been axed from the DA.

Bhanga was found guilty of making “false allegations of racism” against Zille in a Facebook post in June.

“Helen Zille is the most racist person she got ... a file of all black people. Yesterday I learnt how she got information to try to destroy [the] ANC. I’m hurt to know that you were working with the ANC against me,” posted Bhanga.

Another insider said at the disciplinary hearing earlier this week Bhanga was unable to substantiate his accusations against Zille.

His expulsion on Friday meant that he automatically ceased to be the DA MPL in the Eastern Cape, where he was paid R1.1m a year.

After his axing on Thursday night, he claimed on Friday that he had resigned from the DA, but this was dismissed by Malatsi.

Bhanga, who defected to the DA from COPE, has had a colourful political career. He was hospitalised in August 2021 after he broke the lockdown curfew, and on the night of his 44th birthday celebrations was involved in a fatal crash in Gqeberha that claimed two lives. He said he had been driving to attend to a serious medical condition at the time of the crash.

The DA has also parted ways with the Northern Cape MPL Grantham Steenkamp on the basis that he was divisive. It said he had “sowed internal division that hindered the DA’s election performance”.

“All of these [dismissals] were endorsed by [party’s federal executive] on Thursday night,” said Malatsi.