The ANC’s plans to destabilise and distract Helen Zille from fulfilling her duties as premier shows the contempt that our ruling party has for democracy.
After several years of the ANC’s chaotic mismanagement and paltry delivery, the Western Cape’s voters decisively elected the DA to run the province. In moves startlingly reminiscent to its repeated attempts to topple the DA-led Cape Town council, it is clear that the ANC simply cannot accept that its totalitarian agenda has been thwarted by Zille.
The ANC clearly isn’t interested in creating “a better life for all” as its slogan cynically claims. This is because the planned attempts to disrupt Zille’s administration will hurt the poor hardest. Zille has emphasised that service delivery and the practical obligations of her party’s much vaunted “open opportunity society” are her key priorities. Should she be prevented by the ANC from fulfilling this, then the poor — who would be the most significantly affected by her programme of action — will suffer.
Blinded by its elite’s relentless pursuit for power and privilege, the ANC’s track record in local and provincial government — especially in strongholds like the Eastern Cape — has been that of abysmal incompetence and corruption, with the poor remaining shackled by apartheid’s legacy. Little wonder that the party cannot bear to be shown up by a principled, effective white woman who gets things done and actually genuinely cares about the plight of the impoverished.
When the MK Veterans Association threatened to make the Western Cape ungovernable after Helen Zille dared to exercise her right to free speech (even if she displayed unseemly insensitivity in the process), there was not even a whisper of condemnation from the ANC for this brazen, illegal incitement to violence. Making a province ungovernable is tantamount to rejecting the rule of law, and the Constitution that underpins it. But this implicit endorsement of violent intolerance is not surprising. As we shall doubtless see in the months to come, the ANC will use its attack dogs — whether they be a youth league or washed-up war veterans — to brutally undermine any opposition that stands in the way of its bid for perpetual rule.
Phillipa
Poverty and inequality in India, Brazil and rural China is worse than any poverty in SA (just a few examples not even in Africa).
And the”colonisers” (by which you always mean European never Arab) left behind modern hospitals, schools, roads, railways, sewage plants, water systems etc when they left most of Africa about half a century ago.
Meanwhile Africa’s leaders have sold or leased a million hectares of arable land to 5 countries not in Africa including China and Saudi Arabia.
@Grant Walliser
Actually, there is no work involved in showing the DA for what it is:
1. Racist, because even after 15 years, whites STILL dominate the upper echelons of power. How can you deny this reality? The DA window dress the party and website but the facts speak for themselves.
2. Sexist, because the old boys country club mentality is in-grained into Zille and the DA members since most are simply re-badged clones of the old National party hoping to keep CT as an enclave for rich. Even during apartheid, CT used to be one of the most ethnically and economically diverse cities in the world! Have you spoken to Coloreds in Bo Kaap, Woodstock, District Six etc? I’m glad you mentioned the Titanic because In the last decade under Captain Helen Zille the gentrification of CT has gone full speed ahead and damn the icebergs.
um, philipa?
the gap between rich and poor in cape town is being exacerbated by the failure of any real implementation of service delivery in the eastern cape. you cannot thoroughly address the situation in the western cape without doing something about the situation in the eastern cape first.
unless you are an entrepreneur only looking to make money from xhosa-speakers OR an MP, you absolutely need to be english- and/or afrikaans-fluent [emphasis on "and"] to obtain sustainable, worthwhile, potentially wealth-creating employment in the western cape. almost every decent job requires english and/or afrikaans fluency AND literacy.
however, the anc has framed *that* particular argument as a “stop black people” or in other equally racist rhetoric. the disaster that is the eastern cape education department is, in this day and age, every bit a part of the problem to the poverty on the cape flats as the forced removals of the 60s.
you really need to come that 5km up the M4/M5 and see the people sleeping on the streets on this side of town. you’d be surprised by the racial makeup. seriously.
Dear Philippa – You are absolutely right – In the Cape there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and this is a huge problem. However you then say “Whites (even uneducated whites) are the wealthiest and those who are are the most likely to find employment. Blacks are the poorest. ” Rubbish, Philippa. The poor are the poorest. You conflate race with class as the laziest possible argument, and frankly betray your egalitarian communist doctrine – Marx would have been horrified. Class is class, period. Poor whites are poor people, period. Rich blacks are rich people, period. Would you have urged Stalin to only eliminate the European Russian kulaks, and ignore those who had slightly Mongoloid features? I can see the Politburo squirming at having to take such a profoundly National Socialist approach to class differences – they would have had to import specialists from Das Ahnenerbe to classify the kulaks?!!!! The state most certainly does need to intervene with policies to arbitrate (if you will) the current class dynamics – I agree with you entirely – to create ‘equal opportunities’ for all to better themselves but again, excuse me if I smile at the rather quaint communist belief that manipulating outcomes = providing equal opportunities, and we are all exactly the same …we all work as hard, we all have equal abilities.. and any difference in our individual achievements can only be the result of the sinister manipulations of one class or another. You ever run the Comrades Marathon Philippa?
“Open opportunity society” quite interesting neh. Where is this priority when you appoint an all male cabinet. Do you by doing that suggest that the women in the W.Cape do not aspire to be Government leaders and therefore close the opportunity for them to become such. I do not see any significant change in the lives of the Capetonians since Zille became Mayor of Cape Town, but since she is a “principled, effective white woman” maybe there is significant change in the mainly white areas of Cape Town to warrant these attributes of a principled and effective white woman. As far as the majority of black people in Cape Town (Africans, Coloureds and Indians)the struggle continues. To some like Alex, it is democracy when Zille and her friends march the streets of Cape Town for a principle they believe in ( I also believe that we need a drug free society and I hope she continues to march for a drug free society even as premier)but when MKV want to march for a principle they believe in democracy leaves much to be desired in the ANC. What double standards Alex and your friends, maybe its because you are a “young white male” who believes any thing white is effective, principled and caring and any thing black is disruptive, unprincipled, non effective and non caring. One day you will know that the ANC and democracy are one.
@ quentin
Wikipedia Even though there is no universally accepted definition of ‘democracy’,[3] there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all members of the society (citizens) have equal access to power and the second that all members (citizens) enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.
It does not say liberal democracy is the only definition of democracy! Your attack on ANC leadres betrays your liberal blinkres in engaging with anyone whom you see as non-liberal.
A myopic way of undrestanding the world and its workings!!
xolile:
it is necessary, when talking about “majority population” in cape town, that you distinguish by neighborhood.
because if you don’t, then your sentence goes from “might be right” to “definitely wrong”.
you really need to split hairs. if you do not understand why, then i suppose you can continue to live in your world of absolutes — but you will be wrong.
Mark Robertson, Anton Kleinschmidt and Lyndall Beddy: You have taught me one thing I will never forget; When someone doesn’t ascribe to your political convictions, then one is met with xenophobica and (in the case of Lyndall) anti-Semitic comments. Is it possible for us all to be mature enough to debate matters without launching insults at people we don’t agree with.
Robertson: you are quite naive to think, indeed to calim, that race is not a determining factor of class. In South Africa and especially in Cape Town, CLASS IS PRIMARILY DEFINED BY RACE.
Robertson: you are quite naive to think, indeed to claim, that race is not a determining factor of class. In South Africa and especially in Cape Town, CLASS IS PRIMARILY DEFINED BY RACE.
And may I propose that we stop the xenophobic comments against Rzeczpospolita Polska, or anywhere for that matter.
@ Grant Walliser: “Zille has done far more for the libertaion of South Africa than most black people did. She actively opposed apartheid while millions of black people did not. How can she possibly be racist with credentials like that?”
A lot of blacks were busy raising white babies such as yourself. They were battling to even make ends meet. How could your expect them to raise their kids, whites kids and still take up arms?
Zille had servants in her house and besides, she did not do anything special. She was a good journalist, yes, but activist? Get out!
If you want to talk about white Apartheid-activists, how about Ronnie Kasrils, Joe Slovo, Ruth First etc, not Zille. She’s a racist who benefited from Apartheid immensely.
Phillipa
Quote one anti- Semetic statement of mine. I can’t help it that you were taught propaganda and not history.
@ Philippa…..
Do I read you correctly. You are accusing me of “xenophobica” by which I presume you mean xenophobia (n.intense and irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries). I have carefully re-read my earlier posts and can find nothing even vaguely resembling the very serious act of xenophobia so please explain to me how you arrive at this conclusion. This is very important.
You accuse me of dishing out insults. Again, please tell me where. Please read the final sentence in my first post again.
Finally, you may care to answer the two questions I posted in my ealier comment addressed to you
Having read most of the remarks above, I conclude: David Harris is truly the Forest Gump of Thought Leadership. He constantly arrives at naive,bungled conclusions like Zille and the DA are racist. I am thinking of taking his quotes and making a coffee table book entitled “DUH! Insights of a myopic person”. Note oxymoron.
Lyndall Beddy, though she and I have had our clashes, is truly capable of sharp apothegms,as per her rejoinders to that astonishing phenomenon called Phillipa Lipinsky: “Quote one anti- Semetic statement of mine. I can’t help it that you were taught propaganda and not history”. Brilliant! And where on earth does PL get the idea LB is anti-semetic? Pray take us through the violations of semantics in LB’s commentary that helped you get to that conclusion please PL.
Phillipa cannot read, or rather, decodes/distorts what is said through an unexamined propaganda-based thinking.Her distortion of the word “savage” was brilliantly corrected by Mark Robertson and Anton Kleinschmidt and she STILL wont see the light.
I think I’d said it somewhere else myself, but Grant Walliser puts it so well when he suggests that making out Zille to be a sexist because she only employed men is a sexist remark in itself. In effect, by default that is saying men cannot do the job and let time tell and see how they deliver. To be continued…
Edwin Matlapeng – keep it honest I agree, but the likes of Phillipa Lipinsky cannot examine their conditioning and realise she is being untruthful and distorts texts at a preconscious level. She lives life unconsciously. We are all just gently or not so gently trying to point this out to her in our different, underweening ways…
You say we should be polite? I see you berating our poor table manners in various blogs. Who wants to be always polite!!! Here on TL we do “in your face”! we do pugnacious! we do spade is a spade is a spade! Cant you see we enjoy it? We were not allowed to throw the toys out of the cot when we were infants, and now we CAN. We CAN, we CAN. What a blast!
Imagine a TL without curmudgeonly blatherskites like Siphiwo Siphiwo who sees 65.9% majority as a value,a template, a lodestar by which all else is guided and judged (and usually condemned) and therefore all else should be scorned, regardless of proven merit, like the DA’s delivery in the Western Cape?
@ All of you:
The DA only has the Western Cape. Before that, they only had Cape Town. Surely , somebody, anybody even the PR from the DAcould do this. Please.
Just give a list of service deliverables, which, outside of the direction or jurisdiction of the ANC, by government or municipality, which the DA has achieved on their own.
Also, making noise about court cases ( in here falls the arms deal and the Scorpions etc) and other issues which do not put food on the tables or give people a better life do not count. I am not too stupid because I appreciate if we keep corruption down, there is more money for the poor, of whom I have a lot I personally relate too!
Now, this can be accomodate by an equally matched example where the ANC could not match the DA. Now this will give us solid evidence that the DA has delivered and the ANC has not! Additionally, we can then verify if it is true the DA has done a better job than the ANC.
Also, we will see the desperate attempt at rewriting history as favourable to some section of the SA public for what they are. Some want us to believe apartheid never existed!
Please. A humble request…
I will politely await response.
Edwin Matlapeng
@Rod McKenzie: Bravo!
@anto: that was a spelling error, I meant “xenophobia”.
@Rod
Dude, do you think its time for another online therapy session? What made you fly off the handle like this?
If you won’t answer my questions on racism within the DA or why CT has become so racially and economically polarized, how about answering Edwin Matlapeng’s questions?
@ Phillipa
How about answering my questions. Do you want us all to think that you do not understand most of what you read and that this lack of understanding then manifests itself in your comments.
Receives the bravo, facetiously bows, then turns round and waggles his bottom…
Forest Gump and Phillipa – as Mr. Anton Kleinschmidt puts it so well, “How about answering my questions. Do you want us all to think that you do not understand most of what you read and that this lack of understanding then manifests itself in your comments” so well put. That’s why I dont respond except perhaps with a waggling botty.
Edwin
Actually there is a long list of things that the DA has done better than the ANC in Cape Town from building more houses in less time (despite the ANC not giving her more land), to reducing the unemployment rate, to bring Cape Town out of the red where the ANC had left it to a few billion in the black, to piloting two crime fighting projests that worked, to massive infrastructure in public-private partnerships including a R140 million new business district in Mitchells Plain.
She did not get best mayor in the world for nothing.
Thanks Lyndall, nice quick breakdown of Helen Zille’s accomplishments, hopefully that satisfies Edwin and Dave Harris (doubt it, they really are poor readers), to other commentators’ frustration. And yes, nobody just gets best mayor of in the world for nothing, a fact which too often gets overlooked.
Some of you might want to read Helen’s “Vision for the Western Cape”. Inspirational stuff, and a blueprint for the other provinces.
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=131298&sn=Marketingweb%20detail
Rod….thank you