No amount of grandstanding at the Apartheid Museum can whitewash the DA’s ingrained racist nature

True to the low on content and high on grandstanding vacuous leadership style of DA Leader Mmusi Maimane we were confronted today with the unseemly spectacle of him abusing the holy ground of the Apartheid Museum to present a hollow so-called anti-racism pledge for the DA.

What a contrast to see Maimane with his puffed-up empty oratory and gestures in the company of the images of truly great anti-apartheid fighters such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Beyers Naude and Helen Joseph. The contrast between real content and true greatness, and empty fronting could not have been more pronounced.

Tell us Mmusi, did your Masters Athol Trollip, James Selfe and Madam Helen Zille send you to the Anti-Apartheid Museum, thinking that simply because you are black you can present a rather cynical image of the DA being anti-racist?

Furthermore tell us Mmusi; while you were there at the Anti-Apartheid Museum did you take the time to acquaint yourself with the incredible liberation history that is being told there? Did you see the parties that were the predecessors of the DA there as part of our liberation struggle? Did you see their children protesting in 1976 and being gunned down by the security forces of the brutal Apartheid regime?

You know that the answer to each of these questions is a resounding: No! In your heart you know it, because you were once a member of the ANC before you betrayed yourself and your people with your unbridled ambition to become a so-called leader – even at the cost of being a marionette in the hands of white puppet masters and madams.

It is quite revealing that in a country where primarily white racism – in both its historical and current guises – is an overwhelming fact, that you found it necessary right there at the Apartheid Museum to stress that racism is not the preserve of only one group. You actually found it necessary to emphasize that blacks can be equally racist. As a disconnected ivory tower academic statement that may be true … But Mmusi, why don’t you call a spade a spade? That is not the reality of South Africa! Ours is a reality of overwhelmingly white racism, and black exploitation and racist victimhood. Or will your white masters not approve of you stating this fact?

It is statements like this that reveal why the DA battles so much with the realities of racism and the critical need for affirmative action. There is a simple truth that the DA just doesn’t understand, and that is that the equal treatment of unequal people is simply to perpetuate injustice and exploitation. No wonder that a free market fanatic like Herman Mashaba, who wants all affirmative action legislation to be repealed, can end up being the DA’s Mayoral candidate for Johannesburg.

Anti-racism in our beloved country is not achieved by pronouncements and declarations – NO! It was earned by our blood soaked struggle against apartheid. Such credentials continue to be confirmed and earned by real life daily actions to fight racism in all its devious guises. It is earned by having the guts to stand one’s ground against the Dianne Kohler-Barnards and the Penny Sparrows of our country, not just as individuals but to hunt all of those similar to them relentlessly down and to expunge them, to make each one like them the polecats and outcasts of our body politic, and to criminalize their behavior.

Furthermore, to also recognize the more subtle - but equally as hurtful and destructive - racism of those like Standard Bank economist Chris Hart who thinks that black people feel ‘entitled’, and have a ‘victim mentality’ because they have an expectation of access to decent education or to redress the glaring and continuing wrongs of our apartheid past. Mmusi you were dead quiet about this, hey? We did not see you, nor any other DA members or the DA youth outside the Standard Bank Head Office threatening to close your bank accounts if Hart is not fired. No, you were not there, but ordinary ANC members and the ANC Youth League were. It was simply natural for the ANC to do this, as natural as it was for the DA not to be there.

After all, the DA’s economic policies are primarily premised to maintain a market determined free enterprise society that will protect the status quo, benefit the influential and the wealthy (mainly whites) and continue to entrench a racist economy of white privilege from the apartheid era. Ultimately it is not what one pontificates about, but one’s instinctive and natural reactions that reveal one’s political DNA.

Racism is ingrained in the political DNA of the DA. The cosmetic surgery of a black ‘leader’ and a so-called anti-racist pledge will never remove it. Indeed every DA member can sign this ‘pledge’, and yet racism will still continue to pour out of their mouths and spill over into what they post on their social media pages.

Maimane is in for a torrid time, he will soon come to regret the glaring disconnect between his empty rhetoric and the reality of racism in his party. The ANC knows, given enough rope, the DA will hang itself and their fronting black leader on their gallows of racist shame. When that happens we will be there to tell him, “We told you so!”

Mlondi Mkhize

ANCYL Spokesperson