Zulu King has insulted South Africans with Apartheid comments
7 December 2015
The Democratic Alliance in KwaZulu-Natal is deeply disappointed at the alleged utterances by King Goodwill Zwelithini and we find them reckless and damaging.
It is worrying that after 21 years of democracy, there are those in our country who are still longing for apartheid. We find it irresponsible for a leader to admire a cruel and oppressive regime that for years and years oppressed, killed and exploited people of colour. We think the Monarchy should instead acknowledge that things were not so rosy in this country, under the apartheid government. While a small minority enjoyed benefits of the apartheid government, the country was actually falling apart.
We find it strange for the King who was born under the regime that treated all people of colour as second class citizens, in case of Africans, as non-citizens, can praise the same system. This is the same system that discarded African people and crowded black Africans into little homelands to be forgotten and treated as cast-outs.
The King must also not forget that the “strongest army on the continent” he is referring to, massacred his own people, leaving orphans and widows.
Today the country is faced with a new economic challenge of an economy that is no longer structured along the racial lines, but a government with policies that cater for a few connected individuals only. The current economic policies by the governing ANC do very little, if any, to redress the imbalances of the past.
It is the DA’s values of Freedom Fairness and Opportunities that will free people from cronyism and economic exclusion we are living under, now - not the sympathies for the cruelest days of our past.
DA believes in true non racialism and we reject any system that seeks to discriminate against any race group. We believe and we strive for a country, under the DA government, where everyone enjoys the real meaning of freedom.
There is no going back to the horrors of our past, and the DA condemns any efforts to condone apartheid.
Issued by Zwakele Mncwango, DA KZN Leader, 7 December 2015
