Phumzile Van Damme has hit out at Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen over the reasons she resigned as a DA MP back in May this year. Van Damme later resigned her membership to the party in June.
Posting in a thread on Twitter, Van Damme said Steenhuisen “lied to the media” when he told the Sunday Tribune that she had resigned because “she migrated to Norway with her husband, and her job doesn’t allow her to be a member of any political party”.
Van Damme takes to Twitter
The former DA MP went onto to say that the reason she resigned her position was because the DA’s Chief Whip Natasha Mazzone was telling her to ‘lay off Facebook’.
Right, I was going to do this. I see @jsteenhuisen has lied to the media about why I resigned from the DA. I was going to leave this. The day I resigned, I was told by the Chief Whip, Mazzone to lay off Facebook. I could not do that & compromise my values so I resigned.
— Phumzile Van Damme (@zilevandamme) August 25, 2021
Van Damme said that obeying this missive would compromise her principles and so she resigned. At the time of her resignation, she was part of an initiative by the Communications and Digital Technologies Committee to bring Facebook to book about the spread of misinformation on its platform. Facebook initially agreed to meet with the committee but then reversed its decision. She resigned shortly after this.
At the time, the split seemed reasonably amicable. “To be clear, I will not be joining another political party, nor will I be using my time to launch attacks on the DA… I leave on my own terms, having made my own decision,” Van Damme said at the time.
However, last night’s tweets tell a different story in which the former MP said she was warned off Facebook because the party was afraid the social media giant might ‘affect the parties'(sic) votes’.
Receipts? Oh I got them honey. pic.twitter.com/chijyxhG4y
— Phumzile Van Damme (@zilevandamme) August 25, 2021
She even went as far as to tweet a series of messages between herself and Mazzone to back up her story.
We’ve reached out to Ms Van Damme for comment on this story. Watch this space.