John Kane-Berman’s critique of DA Leader Mmusi Maimane requires rebuttal ("Hunting with the hounds and running with the hares on race”, 27 August 2017). Mr Kane-Berman points to a supposed hypocrisy in two statements dealing with race made by Mr Maimane in recent weeks. However, there is simply nothing contradictory at all in the two statements.
Consider the two statements side by side.
Firstly, speaking about the news that there has been an increase in absolute poverty in South Africa since 2011, and that 55.5% of the country now lives in poverty, Mr Maimane said: "There can surely be no greater indictment of any government's performance than the number of people living in poverty rising on their watch…(stemming from) the ANC's economic policies that have failed to grow the economy and create work”.
Secondly, speaking about the historical basis for the acute lack of opportunity faced by most black South Africans, Mr Maimane said: "the general socio-economic underdevelopment of black people in our country today can be accounted for chiefly on the basis of race-based colonial and apartheid policies”.
It is entirely true to say that the ramifications of forced dispossession and economic exclusion of black South Africans are still profoundly felt today, and that this terrible legacy has not been addressed by a failing ANC government. Those two statements are clearly complementary and not contradictory.
To use these two statements as evidence of the DA buying into the analysis of the ANC’s project of a National Democratic Revolution (NDR) or “mouthing NDR rhetoric” is clutching at straws, to put it mildly.