IT seems the Democratic Alliance's rescheduled march on Luthuli House in Johannesburg this coming Wednesday will be a peaceful affair; the ruling party's provincial secretary, David Makhura, has promised there will be no violence.
"ANC members will not engage in any violence with the opposition," Makhura told a press briefing on Thursday. "Those ANC members in this province, they know they are not allowed to fight physically with members of the opposition."
This clearly was of some relief then for Mmusi Maimane, the DA's candidate for Gauteng premier. But, while he has welcomed the undertaking, Maimane should be wary of Makhura's rather formal-sounding comments to the effect that ANC members would be on hand to "receive" the DA and engage with them politically.
Were I DA member - which, as I made clear last week, I am not - this planned reception would have me a wee bit worried. As Makhura put it: "The battle between us and the DA is about who has the best vision for South Africa, who has the best policies to move South Africa forward. We will be there to receive them and educate them on our plans to transform the economy."
Earlier, after Johannesburg metro cops refused to allow the DA to go ahead with their march as originally planned, party leader Helen Zille released a statement in which she revealed the calibre of the instructional tools with which the ruling party had intended to instil in the marchers the ANC vision of economic transformation.
"Yesterday," she said, "several ANC members gathered outside Luthuli House were spotted with rocks, bricks and Tasers. It is ironic that the ANC were allowed to gather illegally in the streets . . . after the JMPD refused the right for the DA to march peacefully. We had to then go through a convoluted process which included an appeal to the Johannesburg Magistrates Court. We trust that the JMPD will prevent the ANC from disrupting the DA's march next week. To our knowledge, no permission has been granted to the ANC to hold such a gathering."