Western Cape Premier Helen Zille will fail to run her ”Bantustan” effectively because she is preoccupied with other matters, newly appointed Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande said on Wednesday.
”I’m worried if Helen Zille is still together upstairs,” said Nzimande, who is also the general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP).
He told a mini congress of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), that Zille was running a ”Bantustan of special order” in the Western Cape.
He said the Democratic Alliance leader was incapable of explaining why she had appointed an all-male Cabinet.
”She says, ‘No, I’m a woman and the City of Cape Town has been led by a woman, and the province is being led by a woman.’
”So, she is counting herself three times now,” Nzimande said to laughter from the audience.
He said Zille argued that ”as the [Democratic Alliance], we care about women, because the mother of my children is a woman”.
Nzimande was reacting to an outburst of criticism against Zille, not only for her men-only Cabinet, but also for comments she made about President Jacob Zuma.
Zille has said, among other things, that Zuma put his wives at risk of Aids if he had unprotected sex with them.
She was quoted in the Sowetan as saying: ”Zuma is a self-confessed womaniser with deeply sexist views, who put all his wives at risk by having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman.”
”The [South African Communist Party] strongly condemns the behaviour of Helen Zille. It is completely unacceptable,” said Nzimande.
He said she was trying to spoil the ”good mood” in the country since the African National Congress won the general elections last month.
”This dear lady is not going to be preoccupied with running the province.
”She is going to be preoccupied about the ANC and Zuma.”
Youth League threatens ”militant action”
The ANC Youth League on Tuesday launched its most personal attack yet on Zille, saying ”Zille has appointed an all-male Cabinet of useless people, majority of whom are her boyfriends and concubines so that she can continue to sleep around with them (sic), yet she claims to have the moral authority to question our President”.
It threatened ”militant action” against the new
premier.
Zille refused to comment, leaving her spokesperson Fritz de Klerk to say: ”We will not dignify that with a response.”
The ANC called Zille’s remark about Zuma ”offensive”, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, ”disgraceful”.
Young Communists League weighed in with: ”Ms Helen Zille is a sick woman who needs help.”
Zille’s office said the quote was taken from a letter to the Argus in which she responded to criticism from Zuma’s new minister of women, youth, children and people with disabilities, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya on the make-up of her provincial executive.
A copy was also given to the Sowetan.
Cosatu’s Western Cape Secretary Tony Ehrenreich has also accused Zille of appointing ”severely challenged MECs, who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer”.
In her letter, Zille retorted: ”Minister Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, whose party, the ANC, has just dropped a woman from the deputy president position, has a nerve to attack me over the gender composition of the DA and ID Western Cape Provincial Cabinet.
”The ANC, in all its 90 years of existence, has never elected [or deployed] a woman as its leader. The DA has done so within the first 10 years of its existence. In fact, until recently, both the DA’s national leader and Parliamentary leader were women.
”The ANC’s alliance partners, the SACP and Cosatu, are also led by men.
Zille added that the ANC’s ”professions of support for women’s rights ring hollow indeed against this background”.
ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte said instead of answering her critics, Zille had chosen to ”insult and demonise” Zuma.
”Even by Zille’s standards of personal invective, this latest attack is an unprecedented example of Zuma-hate. Zille’s outburst is deeply offensive and should be roundly condemned,” she said in a statement.
Duarte called on the rest of the DA to distance itself from Zille’s views.
Zuma conceded during his rape trial in 2006 he had had unprotected sex with his accuser, an HIV-positive family friend, and had showered afterwards to prevent infection.
Cosatu said it was ”disgusted” by Zille’s remarks.
”Rather than try to enter into a genuine debate on the representivity of her Cabinet, she has tried to deflect attention from these serious allegations with a disgraceful, and totally irrelevant, slur against President Jacob Zuma …
”Jacob Zuma has apologised over and over again for his conduct in the case she is referring to,” it added.
The furore comes less than a week after Zuma told Parliament upon his election as President, that he hoped to improve relations with the opposition. — Sapa