Tony Leon

The ANC's advantage is mainly due to opposition incompetence; the biggest personal loser is the DA's Tony Leon (45) whose energetic and pragmatic leadership once rattled the government...

With Morkel and the DA fundraisers embroiled in the Harksen scandal Tony Leon's party is foundering...

Some predictably are Mbeki's die-hard opponents such as the Democratic Party's Tony Leon; others are sometime allies such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions; yet others are even closer to home such as Mbeki's brother Moeletsi who argued in December for Pretoria to pull the plug on Zimbabwe's economy...

The DP led by Tony Leon contributed fresh ideas debating skills and 38 seats in parliament...

Tony Leon's opposition Democratic Alliance (AC Vol 41 No 25) which includes members and ex-ministers from the old apartheid National Party has been attacking the ANC leadership over the issue though those involved in the arms deal cut across party lines...

DA boss Tony Leon a plain-speaking muscular liberal white lawyer was cock-a-hoop brushing aside ANC smears that as a Jew he was anti-Palestinian and that he was gay (he married an Israeli last week)...

This has emboldened the Democratic Alliance under Tony Leon to take the electoral fight into the ANC's power base of African voters...

Yet President Thabo Mbeki is squeezing as hard as he can the only possible rivals to his African National Congress - Chief Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi of the (mainly Zulu) Inkatha Freedom Party which has 34 seats in parliament and Tony Leon of the (mainly white) Democratic Party with 38 seats...

Yet within the UDM and other opposition parties attitudes to DP leader Tony Leon's call for a 'Codesa of the opposition' (a reference to the Conference on a Democratic South Africa where a settlement between warring factions was hammered out in the early 1990s) could soften as memories of election battles fade...

The Democratic Party's provincial leader Peter Leon (brother of DP leader Tony Leon) can be a ferocious political opponent...

The DP has ruled out a coalition with the ANC since its pugnacious leader Tony Leon argues the country needs independent centres of power if democracy is to survive...