Embattled Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille on Thursday said she would launch yet another court application against the Democratic Alliance (DA), this time to release the evidence on which an internal investigation into her leadership was based. 

De Lille, who risks expulsion from the party, has gone to court to challenge the findings of the Steenhuisen report. She now accuses the party of withholding a letter and a cellphone message on which the report was based to stymie the court challenge. 

The case was meant to be heard on Thursday but was postponed, according to De Lille because the party refused to provide the relevant documentary evidence.

The investigation was headed by the party's chief whip in Parliament, John Steenhuisen, and informed the DA's decision to sanction De Lille for misconduct.

"Without the full record of evidence and a proper investigation, the Steenhuisen Report can only amount to a collection of feelings and baseless anecdotes," De Lille said.  

"I have now been forced into the position of having to launch yet another separate court application in order to get the documents which the DA has been using to smear my name. "

The documents De Lille is demanding are a letter from city councillor JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security, and an SMS that she allegedly sent relating to the performance scoring of former city manager Achmat Ebrahim, at the time he applied for the position.

It is alleged that De Lille demanded a good scoring for Ebrahim as she wanted him to secure the job, a charge she denies.

"It is only fair that I receive this as this SMS was relied upon to initiate disciplinary action against me. We are demanding from the DA, the name of the person that I allegedly sent the SMS to, the number of the phone which I allegedly sent the SMS to and a copy of the SMS," she said.

The letter from JP Smith was allegedly to DA leader Mmusi Maimane and the chairman of the party's federal executive James Selfe and spoke to security upgrades at De Lille's home and claims that she shut down a special investigative unit in a bid to prevent it probing abuses.

De Lille claims that though Smith's letter was leaked to the media, the leadership of the party have refused to give her a full copy of it. She said Steenhuisen responded to her request for a copy by saying it was a confidential document.

"All of these tactics begs the question as to what the DA is hiding and how sure they are of their case against me."

De Lille's latest salvo against the party comes as the federal executive prepares to meet to decide her political fate. The party's caucus in the city council last week effectively decided to oust her through an internal vote of no confidence after she narrowly survived a similar motion in a council meeting in February thanks to support from the opposition.

The federal executive, however, has to ratify the caucus' decision.