DA Leader Mmusi Maimane. Picture: Neil McCartney
Things got heated between former ANC politician Dr Makhosi Khoza and DA leader Mmusi Maimane over the weekend when Khoza, who started her own party after leaving the ANC but has since retired from politics, accused the opposition politician of “trying hard” to be black.
“Oh! Poor Mmusi trying hard to be ‘black’. Maimane blackness pursuit is foreign to me,” she said, in response to a tweet in which the DA leader spoke of negotiating a relative’s lobola and drinking umqombothi.
The DA leader soon clapped back, slamming Khoza for trying to “determine what it is to be black”.
He responded: “I’m not pursuing blackness, I just am. I’m not pursuing being African, I just am.
“If you are still pursuing, perhaps you can tell us, what are you now? The effort to subjectively determine what it is to be black is the very tool those who oppress use.”
Outspoken DA MP Phumzile van Damme soon joined the fray, with some less than complimentary words for Khoza.
After saying Khoza once wanted to come to her traditional wedding, Van Damme continued: “Now by celebrating and practising our culture we’re seeking validation of our blackness?
“You’re a mere shadow of the kind, open-minded progressive person you were. You’re now bitter and mean. Because ADeC didn’t work? For shame.”
The DA MP was referring to African Democratic Change (ADeC), the political party Khoza started before retiring from politics altogether.
While Khoza is no longer a politician, her party does still exist and has released press releases recently, one of which expressed the party’s disapproval of the choice of Tito Mboweni as the new finance minister.
Khoza earned a reputation as a fierce critic of former president Jacob Zuma, stepping down as an ANC politician in September 2017 over her view that the party had become “alien and corrupt“.
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“I have decided to no longer tap dance with the hyenas,” she said at the time.
While Twitter is not always on Maimane’s side, with a story in The Citizen last week detailing how people on the platform responded with derision when DA MP Natasha Mazzone suggested he would make a great president, this time round the scorn seemed mainly reserved for Khoza.
Khoza’s tweet was called “vile”, “disgraceful”, and “offensive” in the responses on Twitter.
When Khoza was accused by another Twitter user of having lost her relevance, her response was not what could be defined as humble.
“I will be forever relevant to those who think at my level or above,” she said.
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