The Coloureds are coming!

(This article was originally published on IOL – We’d love to hear your views on this.)

Controversial city councillor Badih Chaaban says he is in talks with prominent businessmen and politicians to create a new political home for coloured people.

Like a number of politicians before him, Chaaban says it is time coloured people had their own party, with their own leaders.

“There are four million coloureds in the country. They must unite under one banner. Coloureds are being taken for fools once again and after 350 years it is enough. We must unite and be a force to be reckoned with,” he said.

“There is a political revolution taking place in the country and it is more prominent in the Cape because of the racial make-up. We do not have enough blacks in the Cape, and even though coloureds make up 52 percent of the population they are divided.”

Chaaban, a leader in the African Muslim Party, was born in Beirut, but has been in Cape Town for 30 years and considers himself a coloured. His short-term mission is to assist in launching a new party on September 16 – the first day of the floor-crossing season – and to topple mayor Helen Zille.

Promising to cut municipal red tape, Chaaban says he has gained the support of a number of businessmen eager to bankroll the new party.

He claims he has already secured the support of 50 of the DA’s 91 councillors. He now wants to seek the support of the ANC and its 80 councillors, enabling him to take over the city.

Chaaban is under police investigation after audio recordings emerged of him offering between R5 000 and R10 000 a month until September to ID and DA councillors in return for their support of the new party.

He is also recorded as having made derogatory remarks about Zille and ID national leader Patricia de Lille, and threatening to kill anyone who betrayed him. Chaaban says the recordings are false and part of another attempt to discredit him.

Zille says the tapes are “entirely authentic and verified by other witnesses. But the courts will determine this when the time comes.”

Chaaban denies making racist remarks about De Lille. He says he gave her a cheque in January for R5 000.

De Lille’s spokesperson, Steven Otter, said: “Ms De Lille meets people all the time. He walked into her office one day in 2004 and he wanted to chat about the problems in Cape Town. Before the 2006 municipal elections he gave the ID R5 000 and he gave money to other parties as well. Ms De Lille is considering her options based on his alleged comments and she will therefore not engage him in the media.”

Six DA councillors have come forward to say they were approached by Chaaban with offers of money, and the ID has asked three of its councillors – Jameelah Daniels, Abdulla Omar and Trevor Trout – to “please explain”.

In a wide-ranging interview at his Milnerton home, Chaaban said he would help set up the new party but would not join it as the African Muslim Party needed him more.

“Come September 16 the coalition will be smashed like a watermelon. There will be a new mayor, deputy mayor and speaker,” he said.

Chaaban has also brought a R300 000 defamation suit against Zille and he now accuses her of paying his ex-girlfriend and former employee Tatiana Jacobs-Croukamp R50 000 to lie in an affidavit.

But Zille hit back at him on Saturday, saying: “Mr Chaaban’s allegations are absurd. I have a number of affidavits that all reinforce each other – of which Ms Jacobs-Croukamp’s is only one. It is defamatory to suggest that I paid her for making a statement. She contacted me out of the blue and came to my office. I then referred her to my lawyer, and her statement was made entirely voluntarily.

“Badih has been so infected by the murky world of gangsterism that he cannot envisage an open, honest, free and fair affidavit being made. The real concern in this matter for me is Ms Jacobs-Croukamp’s safety.”