The Umkhonto Wesizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA) is to march on Helen Zille’s office on Wednesday morning to demand that she apologise to President Jacob Zuma, an MKMVA spokesperson said on Tuesday.
National organiser Fatty Booi said the association had secured authorities’ permission for the march, which would start in District Six and make its way through the Cape Town city centre to Zille’s office in Wale Street.
The MKMVA had been denied permission for a planned march last week, he said.
”The purpose of our march is quite clear,” he said.
”Zille ha[s] undermined the highest office in the country, because whatever she said about President Jacob Zuma , it was okay before the elections, but now that president has been elected into the highest office by the people of South Africa, and they see him as a role model.”
Booi was referring to Democratic Alliance (DA) leader and Western Cape Premier Zille’s recent statement that Zuma put his wives at risk of contracting HIV when he had unprotected sex with an infected woman.
This statement had undermined the Constitution that the veterans had fought for, Booi said.
He said her appointment of males only to her provincial executive committee also showed disrespect for the constitutional imperative of gender equality.
The marchers would be demanding that she ”dismantle that man-dominated cabinet of hers”.
Zille had stood for premier because she was an attention-seeker, he said.
”Tomorrow we are coming to give her the attention she wants, but in a very different way. She will never want us at her office again,” he said. — Sapa