Durban — Politician Helen Zille is under fire after she publicly said she once phoned a journalist, and the rand plummeted during the negotiations with the ANC following the May 29 elections.
She made the revelation during an event hosted by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom on Wednesday in Parkview, Johannesburg, which was followed by the release of the full video of the event.
After the elections failed to produce an outright winner, the parties, including the ANC and the DA, started wheeling and dealing behind the scenes.
It was at this point that Zille, the DA federal council chairperson, said she had called a journalist after the ANC did not show up for one of the meetings that had been planned between the two parties.
“Every time things went well (with negotiations), the rand lifted up. Every time things went badly, the rand plummeted,” Zille said.
“The bond markets were exactly the same. It was extraordinary.
“I have checked the value of the rand against the timeline of the negotiations, and there is absolute correlation,” said Zille.
“Once, I think it was on June 11, when we were supposed to have negotiations, the ANC just didn’t rock up. We waited the whole day, and they didn’t come.
“So I told a journalist who wrote in the newspaper the next day. The rand went right down,” said Zille.
She added: “I didn’t do this to get the rand down, I did it to say to the ANC, don’t mess us around.”
She did not reveal the name of the journalist.
Parties such as the EFF and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) have said Zille should be held accountable.
Many South Africans also rushed to social media platforms and called Zille to account for saying she once called a journalist, and when the story was published, the rand plummeted.
“The racist DA of Helen Zille used the rand as their strongest point during the negotiations with the ANC,” said Banele on Twitter.
Another user, Critical Mnisi, wrote: “Helen Zille revealed the DA used the rand value as a lever in negotiations.”
During the same event, Zille publicly admitted, for the first time, that the current multi-party government in its current form was not a Government of National Unity (GNU).
Zille said the current government, formed after no party mustered a clear majority in the May 29 elections, was a coalition between the ANC and DA and not a Government of National Unity as had been stated by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Among the parties that were part of the pact governing the country were the IFP, the Patriotic Alliance and the PAC of Azania.
South Africa was rocked by a litany of allegations of rand manipulation by banks in 2015.
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