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JOHANNESBURG. – The head of policy for South Africa’s largest opposition party has resigned, citing a lack of support from the leadership and exposing rifts in the build-up to elections.

Gwen Ngwenya said she would remain a lawmaker for the Democratic Alliance (DA), which is preparing to fight the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in the vote expected in May.

But she said she would leave the senior post, accusing the party of failing to stick to its convictions on affirmative action policies, and of not giving her policy unit enough funding.

The DA has criticised the ANC’s approach to Black Economic Empowerment, a policy designed to address South Africa’s racial disparities in wealth and opportunities which linger more than two decades after the end of apartheid.

But when Ngwenya said the DA was exploring policy alternatives in August last year, her position was contradicted by another senior member of the party.

“The bottom line is that I do not believe the DA takes policy seriously,” she said in her resignation letter.

The DA, which traditionally has a strong white support base, elected its first black leader Mmusi Maimane four years ago to widen its appeal among voters. It won control of three major cities in 2016.

But it now faces a resurgent ANC under President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has vowed to root out corruption and boost economic growth since replacing scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma in February last year.

The DA was embroiled in another internal dispute last year with former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, who later left to form her own party. The DA accused de Lille of turning a blind eye toward corruption, but she denied that and challenged the party’s efforts to remove her in court.

The DA has acknowledged that the disagreement with de Lille damaged its reputation.

The resignation of Gwen Ngwenya as head of the DA’s policy unit has sparked renewed outrage at how the DA marginalizes black women. I’m not convinced this is what happened.

The women (like Mbali Ntuli, Lindiwe Mazibuko, De Lille) that she is being compared to stood for very different politics compared to Gwen’s. Those women were disruptive, seeking a transformational agenda that was unconventional for some in the DA.

Gwen Ngwenya exercises or believes in establishment politics, so much that she is much more conservative than some ardent liberals in the party. Has is a different and somewhat unique circumstance.

Gwen’s return to the DA and her subsequent swearing in as a Member of Parliament (a position she won’t resign) took even some DA senior members by surprise. She came in already married to a particular faction. The faction described by Adriaan Basson in one of his articles as “the laptop boys”. She would, because of her research experience at the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) bolster the credibility and her being black with the politics she espouses was a massive bonus. The laptop boys are seen as the “liberal core” proponents within the DA and they are mainly opposed by “the Bruma boys” – those at Head Office closely connected to James Selfe. – Reuters