Zille to face the music
WESTERN Cape Premier Helen Zille will on Saturday be interviewed by the legal structures of the DA’s federal executive as a first step towards determining if she should face disciplinary charges for her controversial remarks on colonialism.
“They will then decide whether there is evidence or not to support a disciplinary charge,” said the chairman of the party’s federal executive, James Selfe.
The federal executive would then decide whether to refer the case to a disciplinary panel.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane instituted a complaint after a storm broke over Zille’s head last week when she questioned on Twitter whether “every aspect of colonialism was bad”. –
I HAVE been following the Helen Zille Twitter saga with some dismay. I cannot believe that she can express these views on colonialism. A country is not just about the physical infrastructure that has been built up over time. Let’s look at the social legacy of colonialism for South Africa today:
The British colonial ministry support for the position of white South Africa in the forming of the modern South African state during the 1908 convention. This ensured that only the whites could vote. This
We must condemn colonialism in SA
ROGER Layzell, please stop defending colonialism. Our ancestors committed a crime in our South Africa.
We are on the wrong side of our history. I don’t want to own the sins of my forbears, nor do I believe that I should. It is time to make amends and do what is right.
I cannot change history, but we can build a better future, if we choose to.
If I must bear the burdens of the past I will do so willingly in the hope that a better future awaits. JOHN DRAKE
Winklespruit
We must all unite for a better land
THE struggle for freedom is changing its focus from a fight for liberation from “oppressors” to a new struggle. Now we battle all sorts of ghosts from our remembered and imagined pasts. Coupled with our fears for the future and media “spooks”, are we not going around in frantic circles?
Meanwhile the struggle is primarily within our own selves. Regardless of race we are caught up in trying to defend “the sins of our fathers”.
A little like ancient tribes warring in waterless deserts.
Will this focus on protecting our ancestral “honour” show us the way? Their turn is over. Their swords are down.
Now is the time to look forward with liberated spirits. Surely together we can forge a better inheritance for our children, one free from all our past mistakes.
Keep that rainbow in mind! We are free to dialogue trustingly and patiently. If we cut out impulsive hate speech we will nurture one another in this new struggle.
By thinking forward, cleaning up our children’s inheritance slowly and carefully (that African definition of intelligence) we will overcome even our meanest and most vicious and unguarded selves.
Rights are more than slogans. They are notions to be achieved and earned through courageous diligence and love. Hope on… DESI HALSE
Durban
What stops us from living in harmony?
SOUTH Africans should now be standing together in the interests of our country. Why are we still playing the blame and shame game?
Apartheid was a dreadful law and the people who suffered feel hatred for the experience they had to go through. But, why live in the past?
The government uses the past as malicious hypnotism to fuel the fires of the past instead of trying to unite all South Africans to change their personal stories and strive towards unity, peace and the ultimate love for all no matter your colour.
There are many South Africans who feel the present government makes many mistakes but are powerless to do anything about it – well, the same story applied to the apartheid government and the citizens at that time.
The world does not heap blame and shame on the Germans living now for what Hitler did.
I think it is time to forget and forgive – live in the present and use our combined effort to strive for a better South Africa, where we can feel love and peace and work for a better future.
We all need to be empowered by paved the way for the development of white South Africans at the expense of all other South Africans for the next 84 years.
This power ensured that all other South Africans would remain disadvantaged through differential education and vocational training, health care, land ownership, etc.
The destruction of family life through the migrant labour system. The colonial devices to force black South Africans into this system was to limit access to land and impose hut and poll taxes which forced saying “What you did or what you did not do cannot determine my destiny. I forgive you and set you free”.
I want to know what is stopping South Africans from living together in harmony.
What is stopping all South Africans from trying? Let the people of the rainbow nation show the world how to do this – let us rise above this state of affairs. We can do this. NORMA THOMAS
Forest Hills
Courts stepping in for Parliament again
IT WAS very interesting to read the judgment handed down by the Constitutional Court in the Sassa matter.
What was noteworthy was the court held Minister Bathabile Dlamini personally accountable, and then set in place a programme of mandatory reporting back to the court on progress of the remedial action. Additionally, Cash Paymaster Services was ordered to provide full financial disclosure.
The judgment was widely welcomed but, of course, the big issue being missed here is this is precisely the type of accountability a proper functioning Parliament should have been demanding.
When the opposition tried to get Dlamini and her department to account, we were stonewalled for over a year. Dlamini was protected at every stage from rigorous oversight and accountability and she was shielded by the Speaker from answering written and oral questions on the Sassa matter. them into the cash economy.
The subversion of existing legal systems to be subservient to the colonial legal codes and pass laws. This has resulted in a deep suspicion of any legal rules which persist to this day.
Deep-seated racial and ethnic divisions which make it difficult for us to engage with fellow citizens rationally on how to tackle crucial political and social issues.
This has created a fertile breeding ground for unscrupulous populists of all stripes to flourish in our
The truth is that if Parliament was doing its job, there would have been no need for the court to intervene. Imagine if Dlamini had been put on the same terms by Parliament for regular reports and full disclosure a year ago?
Parliament is empowered by our constitution to subpoena any person before it and compel them to produce any document.
The ANC Speaker, the committee chairperson and ANC members simply refused to do this, and they are the real villains in this sorry saga. Just like when the Speaker and ANC were found to be derelict in the Nkandla scandal, the courts are again being forced to step in and do the work that Parliament should.
The Speaker has become nothing more than the goalkeeper for the executive rather than the referee in Parliament, and she’s been handed yet another red card by the Constitutional Court. JOHN STEENHUISEN MP Chief Whip of the Official
Opposition
‘Big business’ threat is discriminatory
IN THE Mercury, March 20, it’s ironic to see in the photo titled “Wall of Remembrance”, the slogan: “Right to freedom from discrimination” painted on it.
However, in the report titled: “ANC populism v pragmatism on economy”, which is immediately below this photo, it’s a very different story. The irony lies in the latter report virtually starting with a threat to “big business” by MEC Sihle Zikalala, to “support the call politics. My apologies to fellow readers if I have missed any other legacies of colonialism.
I cannot believe how someone as educated as Helen Zille cannot see this before resorting to blasting her ill-formed thoughts on to Twitter.
What is most distressing is the damage she is doing to her own party, which is emerging as a credible alternative in government. It has been most pleasing to see the bravery of both the DA and EFF in starting to make some steps to work together since the 2016 elections. for radical economic transformation, or risk plunging the country into crisis”.
Significantly, the ANC’s understanding of the word “transformation” has never been clearly defined, probably as a clear definition would have to admit its wholesale discrimination against whites, the pretext lying in section 9 (2) of our allegedly non-racist constitution.
So the term “radical economic transformation” probably means nationalisation of all “big business” and removal of whites from all managerial positions, similar to the policy of expropriation of white-owned land without paying anything near its market value.
This is a far cry from the “right to freedom from discrimination” being painted on walls countrywide.
And Zikalala is a wolf in sheep’s clothing by following his threat with the words: “This is not about taking from the rich to support the poor. We talk directly to changing the heart of the economy of our country” (by radical economic transformation on the above lines!)
Also in the above mentioned threat, Zikalala implies whites are about to plunge SA into crisis. However, as Mamphela Ramphela admitted recently: “We are now in this crisis with rampant corruption and collusion” (for which only the ANC can be blamed).
The problem is that black VIPs avoid fingering the real culprits, who they are scared of, it being much easier to blame whites, the very few left here being completely marginalised by BEE, EE, and expropriation of white-owned land. ROGER LAYZELL
Rosehill
As a white South African who is concerned and fearful about the lack of real reconciliation, I have been hopeful that through this co-operation, capable young leaders from both parties will start finding each other.
This would give us huge confidence for the future of our country.
Please, Helen – climb off your high horse, zip your lip and resign before you suffer the indignity of being fired. RICHARD MACHANICK
Hillcrest
DA response in line with party values
THE letter by Duncan Du Bois (March 22) refers.
The DA’s response to Helen Zille’s tweets on colonialism was not done on the basis of “political correctness”. It was done in line with the values at the party’s core; that we have had a difficult and oppressive history that needs to be overcome in the present day.
Nothing about the colonial regime was done to benefit South African people. It was done to allow colonialists to extract wealth from this country. As Mbali Ntuli indicated in her response to Zille’s tweets, we cannot laud the development of infrastructure and technology under the Nazi regime in Germany as a positive outcome. It was painful and oppressive, as was colonial rule in South Africa.
It is unsurprising that Du Bois disagrees with the DA’s response. Despite serving as a DA councillor for a number of years, his political roots existed in the far-right Conservative Party.
This party was formed in opposition to the National Party’s relaxing of some of apartheid’s most restrictive clauses. Du Bois found himself at odds with an increasingly progressive DA and no longer serves in our structures.
Freedom, fairness and opportunity does not mean we ignore the horrors of the past. It means that we recognise it and work daily to build a better future for all South Africans. NICOLE GRAHAM
deputy leader DA eThekwini caucus