Former DA leader Tony Leon paid glowing tribute to outgoing federal leader, Helen Zille, at the party's federal congress in Nelson Mandela Bay on Sunday.
Leon, who led the opposition in the government of former president Nelson Mandela, told more than 1400 delegates, that "today they are not going to watch or read about history but will be making history by electing a new leader."
Leon said the new leader must adapt tactics and strategies where necessary to grow the party further, reach out to more people and offering "rescue" to poor communities in distress.
He said the new leader must "honour the country's past, but he should not live in the past."
"More than this he must convince with the power of his own convictions. He must tell the truth that nationalisms of whatever stripe divide and exclude and as history has proven again and again in the end they always fail."
Leon said the new leader must hoist aloft Nelson Mandela's banner of a non-racial rainbow nation built on freedom and cemented by opportunity and choice.
He said the new party leader, widely tipped to be Mmusi Maimane, should always be in the service of the many not the few.
Leon said the new leader must also live as Zille did, where public office is a place for principled achievement and not a perch to acquire wealth or a hide-out for criminal misbehaviour.
"Once again in the circumstances history has placed us in, your next leader must speak to the great possibilities for all our futures, not to appeal to the sum of all our fears. He must offer the prospectus of a brighter tomorrow not the failed message of a better yesterday," Leon added.
Leon said these are "great and challenging tasks" but also an opportunity to seldom offered up by our young and turbulent democracy.
"Let us make sure that he succeeds," Leon concluded.
