The row over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons holds a lesson for ”callous” political parties in the Western Cape, provincial Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Friday.
”Just like we must calm the flames of the cartoon anger, we must desist from fanning the flames of local identity issues,” he said in an address at the opening of the provincial legislature.
He said that in the Western Cape, nothing shows more than an election campaign how fragile the identity of its people is and ”how callous certain leaders and parties are in their exploitation of people’s insecurities and fears”.
He was apparently referring to the Democratic Alliance, the main rival of Rasool’s African National Congress in the run-up to next month’s local government polls, which has made ending what it calls ”ANC racism” a campaign platform.
”Political leaders have no qualms in repeating sentiments publicly [that were] formed in the most desperate and alienated of situations in the human condition,” Rasool said.
The violent global reaction to the Muhammad cartoons and the ”irrational exploitation of the anger by the politically desperate on both sides” shows that the anger, fear and insecurities emerging from the identities by which people define themselves ”are not tigers we should or can ride”.
He said the reasonableness with which the president of the Muslim Judicial Council, the Danish ambassador and the newspaper editors of the Western Cape have dealt with the cartoon issue in the province is a tribute to the power of South Africa’s Constitution. — Sapa