What are the real reasons behind this week’s unseemly spat between DA leader Helen Zille and the ANC?
To recap, Zille appointed an all-male, virtually all-white Western Cape Cabinet. She insisted her appointments were based on merit and ‘fitness for positions”. Predictably, there were howls of outrage from the ruling party.
And then it got personal.
Zille said President Jacob Zuma was a ‘self-confessed womaniser with deeply sexist views, who put all his wives at risk by having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman”.
In a surreal attack, the MK Military Veterans’ Association’s Kebby Maphatsoe said the reasons for Zille appointing an all-male cabinet was so that its members were ‘kept close enough to satisfy her well-evolved wild whore libido.
The ANC’s Youth League called Zille a ‘fake racist girl” who had appointed a ‘cabinet of useless people, majority of whom are her boyfriends and concubines so that she can continue to sleep around with them, yet she — questions our president”.
The Youth League went on to threaten ‘militant action” against Zille if she continued to ‘speak hogwash”.
Perhaps the real reason behind the attacks is a severe case of sour grapes. For the first time, the DA won the province outright, and does not have to enter into a coalition deal.
If Zille spoke the truth about Zuma, why the clamour by the ANC and others to drag her name through the mud? While she can appoint whomever she chooses to her executive, it is disappointing that Zille could not improve the gender balance in her executive. The party failed to identify anyone in the Western Cape who could be groomed for a cabinet position.
| FULL SPEED AHEAD |
NOT SO FAST |
2010 Local Organising Committee
This week’s Full Speed Ahead goes to the Local Organising Committee, which on Friday celebrated the five-year anniversary of its successful bid to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa. |
 The ANCYL and Helen Zille
The ANC Youth League and Helen Zille share the spot for this week’s barrage of accusations and personal insults that have lowered the tone of South African politics. |
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