Mokonyane lost race

DEAR SIR — The secret of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) campaign is out if Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane’s statement yesterday is anything to go by (Mokonyane tells Gauteng that DA wants a ‘pale male’ in charge, May 28). It’s going to be all about race and nothing but race.

With a record of almost universal failure across almost every spectrum of government in Gauteng, culminating in the collapse of her youth employment scheme — which means that over her five-year term of office she has achieved precisely nothing in terms of youth employability — all Ms Mokonyane and her party have to fall back on is (to quote her) the “wit gevaar”.

Just imaging the furore if the Democratic Alliance said the same (which it would never do) about African leadership in Gauteng.

Ms Mokonyane’s rule has brought a bitter harvest to us all, and especially to the poor and marginalised.

So with no record of success to fall back on, with xenophobia and service delivery protests racking the province, and with youth unemployment at between 60% and 70%, all she has to contribute is a primitive racism that makes a mockery of what is left of the old ANC’s claim to non-racialism, and that shows to what depths that party has plunged.

As Oliver Cromwell said on another occasion: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.” Dr Gavin Lewis Democratic Alliance MPL, Gauteng Legislature