Buti Manamela, YCLSA National Secretary, Political Notes, May 5 2011: 

Over the last elections, even now under the leadership of Hellen Zille, the DA has zigzagged in the public space by overtly portraying themselves as a non-racial political party in order to increase its profile, whilst covertly maintaining a hypocritical and racist agenda when it comes to its internal leadership issues and service delivery in Cape Town and the Western Cape.

If you look at the poster of the DA, it is nothing but a marketing strategy to reflect the DA as non-racist and non-sexist. I am sure the thousands of election focus groups and the millions spent on advertising told the ‘DA war-room' and the drivers of its ‘delivery bus' the honest truth: "you are racist and sexist-work on it".

Even the choice of the slogan: "We deliver for All" (much smarter than FIGHT BACK of Tony Leon, I must admit) is meant to win black and white support whilst in actual fact the credentials of the DA shows that they have delivered for "all the white suburban's" both in Cape Town and Midvaal.

If you look at the DA's ‘smart electoral strategy', for instance, you can see how desperate this is mainly meant to attract the majority of the votes whilst remaining mum and secretive about its selection of candidates. They launch their election manifesto in Kliptown (where the Freedom Charter was adopted), celebrate freedom day in Solomon Mahlangu Freedom Square and Hector Peterson Memorial, and even have De Lille back to her NACTU roots. Zille even took dancing classes from her real maid in order to appeal to the black vote. This is a clear campaigns focused on getting black votes for the retention of white power.

The truth is that with the death of the National Party and the conservative nature of the Freedom Front Plus, the DA wants to remain a hopeful home for the ‘whiteys who did not create or support apartheid', but wants unsuspecting black people to catapult these whiteys into power.

For this to happen, they will ‘clean up a few darkies who spits the queens language excellently' and present them as capable of leading the DA in the future and applaud their embracive nature of the "open opportunity society'. As part of this propaganda, the DA has desperately tried to hoodwink everyone into forgetting where we come from, that apartheid and its architects are gone and done with and that it is no longer about black and white "political parties".

They urge all those willing to listen that "liberation politics is history", and that the time has come to be all inclusive, erase our past and embrace a future that the DA represents.

Yes apartheid is gone; but the pains and scars of apartheid are our daily nightmares, including in the townships where Mazibuko and De Lille were born.  Well we have news for you: we will only forget about apartheid when its legacy is gone.

Even after a teary twitter post raising the hopes of Mazibuko as the potential future leader of the DA, we cannot forget the countless number of instances when the DA has shunned at open-opportunities (pun intended) to become truly non-racial (or even non-sexist).

Remember when Zille was to appoint the Western Cape cabinet, and we were presented with an all-white-male leadership. If you look at the racial profile of the DA's membership in parliament and the provincial legislatures you see what the DA really is. If you narrow the search and look deeper into those who are appointed as shadow Ministers at various levels of government, you see who the real DA is when you realise that all is white and merry in our supposed non-racial political party.

It may be convenient to argue that the DA has appointed a young black and lost soul to run for mayor for the City of Johannesburg; but the DA sees no potential of winning this City and would be happy to see Mmusi Maimane suffer the embarrassment of loosing to the ANC as opposed to one of its own white laities from the affluent suburbs.

Whilst in Tshwane, where Zille wrongly predicts that they are neck-and-neck with the ANC and that it will go down to the wires, they have gone to their automatic choice of one white Brandon Topham. Why not one of those black mamas they rented during a service delivery protest earlier in the year? It is not wrong for a black person to join the DA.

It is actually foolhardy to blame people who join any political party (except those whose membership is only opened to a specific race). But to be in a political party in order to be paraded as a symbol of its non-racial success like a monkey being displayed at a circus to show the success of its master in training this mammal into performing human traits is utter unacceptable nonsense. Shame on both the monkey and the master.

In their weak defense, the DA and some of its supporters have accused the ANC of being the opposite of the Nationalist Party and a mere black nationalist movement. They also argue that the DA puts people in position who can deliver rather than on the basis of their colour. Mazibuko has often been paraded as the blue-eyed-girl of Zille as a reflection of her ‘capacity and understanding' of DA policy, and thus, a commitment of the party to non-racialism and non-sexism.

But the lenses which the same people selected by the DA use are incapable to see beyond the colour line of Camps Bay and Khayelitsha. Dan Plato and his Counsellors have spent millions of rent in Camps Bay on, for instance, refuse removals and bicycle lanes than they have spent on a toilet in Makhaza.

They have spent millions forcing homeless people out of Houtbay than they have in relocating these people to a descent shelter. They have used rates and taxes in the City (the highest in the country) to keep especially black people out and relegate them to Khayelitsha. The mentality of service delivery adopted by the DA is the same as the one it applies on leadership. It is based on black and white.

All the DA is interested in, is "how many black votes can we get so that we can get as many whites as possible to be appointed in positions". The DA should give us the racial profile of their candidates nationally. Are they a reflection of the demographics of our country? Were they popularly elected by communities? The problem with the DA is not only that it is run by Whites; the problem is that it has sophisticated its neo-apartheid policies and wants to sell it through the ballot to its future victims. We will not buy that!

As long as these answers remain unsettled, then we will start believing what Nzimande said: A Madam and Two Eves. That's the Bottomline, cos the YCLSA said so!

Issued by the YCL, May 5 2011

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