A tweet too far: Helen Zille offended many
Zille stewed in a devil’s brew
That Helen Zille decided once again to enter a pool teeming with voracious sharks, and now finds herself being steadily devoured, will doubtless cause her to lose some very necessary sleep.
It has added to the already complex political burden of her young successor, whom she installed in a great leap of faith as the head of the party that she managed to build into South Africa’s official and growing opposition. One would have thought that, after having previously been painfully bitten on entering the shark pool, she would have been wary of jumping in once again – and it may be fatal.
But it was a sad day indeed when one of the sharks joining the feeding frenzy did so in the editorial slot of “Africa’s best read” (How ‘Spur man’ and Zille are alike), with the same fanatic mindlessness as the shoal of twitterati, the same quasi-intellectual non sequiturs, the same inability to argue without playing the dreary old racist card of “the whites” – and even the inevitable, oh so passé “fuck off”.
On the facing page, the Mail & Guardian’s cockily verbose columnist Eusebius McKaiser runs loudly yapping history-erasing expletives and with tail wagging behind.
Any even half-sane person, having read the actual Zille tweets on page four of the same sorry edition, can only shake a head in disbelief at the vacuous gall of the devil’s brew concocted around them in the M&G’s editorial offices.
Although their number must be fast dwindling, those faithful readers of the rump of an erstwhile critical and courageous weekly, which followed in the illustrious footsteps of the pioneering Rand Daily Mail, can only paraphrase Ahmed Kathrada’s cry of despair at Nelson Mandela’s funeral: “I have lost a trusted thought partner. I don’t know who to turn to.” – Balt Verhagen, Johannesburg
■ As much as colonialism was mostly about the subjugation and stealing from the hosts of respective regions, it shouldn’t be used to vilify later generations who were not participants in its evil side. It’s not unlike the sidelining from jobs of white people who were apolitical, unaware or indifferent to the brutality of apartheid.
Zille’s condescending tweet bordered on racism, but it was about the celebration of perceived white supremacy over some black smart alecs who are actually insecure snobs.
I am definitely not condoning Zille’s frustrated jibes. There are many ignorant racists who believe that before white people arrived in Africa there was no sky, no sun, let alone oxygen for the natives to breathe.
Let’s stop this race battle about colonialism, settlers and backward or indolent Africans and rather add value to the country and each other.
In most homogeneous, developing nations there is almost always only a very minimal state of law and order, if it exists at all. Many are bordering on utter chaos and damnation. Accountability is a swearword to beings of this madding-crowd mentality and outlook in life.
We need our diversity for introspection, responsibility and accountability. Respect is the start and end of any interaction. – Luyanda Marlon Kama, Port Elizabeth
■ As has happened regularly over past few months, I am again disappointed by the M&G’s surprising lack of intellectual honesty and balance as you jump on to the popular bandwagon – this time pillorying the easy target of Helen Zille as the “racist white madam”. The statements in this editorial are devoid of even an attempt at journalistic evenhandedness, and quite frankly betray the M&G’s hard-fought liberal legacy.
Has the author of this editorial ever performed an in-depth interview with Zille? Or is the author able to state with such categorical certainty that Zille “refuses to acknowledge the experiential legacies of institutionalised racism” simply on the basis of reading a few Tweets?
The editorial, though dressed up in sophisticated language and initially offering a fair assessment of the violence of colonialism, then turns into drivel.
To be clear, the actions of the “Spur man” were despicable and those of the mom courageous and correct. Colonialism has caused untold harm over the centuries and millennia. Zille’s tweets were foolish and have damaged her and her party unnecessarily. But her Daily Maverick article made some valid points. You may disagree, but then deal with the merits of her argument rather than likening her to the racist “Spur man”.
Labelling people “deplorable” is a lazy way to argue, and doesn’t help our democracy or contribute to nation-building. These used to be things the M&G valued, and which are more necessary now than ever before. – Karl le Roux, Ginyintsimbi, Eastern Cape
■ The Helen Zille fan club’s justification of her comments on how we have colonialism to thank for infrastructure, medical advances, modern transport and the like proves that some South Africans are unaware that they’re perpetuating racism by harbouring such justifications.
By praising colonialism, you are, in effect, saying that the country’s early inhabitants, black people, were incapable of thinking for themselves sufficiently to be able to build a modern society. What you’re actually saying is: “Well, some blacks may have been killed by the colonialists. So what?”
The Zille fan club should know that the Aztecs built a thriving city long before the discovery of the Americas by white people. The Egyptians were among the first engineers, thousands of years before Christ. And, when Europeans discovered the Chinese crossbow, the Chinese had invented better weaponry. Need I go on?
The colonialists were not Mother Teresa types, and they certainly didn’t do Africans a favour by colonising the so-called dark continent.
Cecil John Rhodes made this crystal clear when he said: “We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies.” – Sandile Ntuli, Johannesburg