Former Western Cape Premier Helen Zille. Picture: Moneyweb.
While the DA mulls over what to do next after Helen Zille’s latest bit of controversy, the party’s Gauteng leader John Moodey said Zille’s views that “there are more racist laws today than there were under apartheid,” were nothing more than hogwash.
After highlighting the severe impact of apartheid on the country’s previously marginalised groups, Moody said Zille’s tweets spoke of “ignorance and an attitude of superiority”.
He said a person who never experienced what apartheid did to people lacked the understanding of how certain people were degraded under the system.
The DA has confirmed that Zille’s tweets were being reviewed against the rules of the party, to indicate whether she had broken any laws. The party’s decision on the matter will be eagerly awaited, while opposition parties have attempted to capitalise on the gaffes in their reactions to the tweets.
The EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi weighed in on the debate to say there was more racism in Zille’s head than there were racist laws under apartheid.
Zille also dragged the governing party into the debate, by tweeting: “Had it not been for former president FW de Klerk dismantling the apartheid regime, the ANC would still be bogged down in the mess of its so-called liberation camps and infighting. They (ANC) had no viable armed Struggle to speak of.”
In response, the ANC’s spokesperson Dakota Legoete called on the DA to discipline Zille, whom he described as suffering a “hangover of white supremacy agenda,” IOL reports.
“They must discipline her because she is their leader and what she says represents their policy position, because the position she holds now in the DA is equivalent to the secretary-general in the ANC, which is not a small position,” he said.
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