‘Whites should accept defeat' - DA replies

Lindiwe Mazibuko writes that Musa Xulu is a graceless victor in a race-war of his own making.

Musa Xulu's piece "It's time white South Africans accepted defeat and move with the times", (see here) is surely proof positive (if indeed any were needed) that the ANC has well and truly abandoned any pretence of working towards a truly non-racial, tolerant society in South Africa.

Xulu's writing is littered with the divisive language of the graceless victor in a race-war of his own making, and seems intent on sowing discord, divisiveness and fear amongst the people of the Rainbow Nation, at a time when we are sorely in need of principled leadership and unity in our efforts to turn South Africa into a winning nation.

To achieve this end, Xulu resorts to a hackneyed, unimaginative and tired caricature of the Democratic Alliance (DA) as a white party, bent on retuning this country to the dark days of apartheid. He consults no facts to make this argument; produces no proof to back up his allegations; instead he resorts to his own prejudices and shockingly crude assumptions about who "Black people" and "White people" are, and what they represent, to give life to his miserably cynical views about who we are as South Africans.

Fortunately, it is not up to Musa Xulu (or indeed up to me) to dictate to South Africans who we are as a nation. We need not succumb to the divisive language and the politics of "us" and "they" and "them" which Mr Xulu and the ANC, and the National Party before it, used to sow fear and distrust amongst us. The DA, unlike the ANC, recognizes that there is a growing number of South Africans - both black and white, and of every other colour and culture and creed - who believe that the project of building democracy and creating opportunities for all in South Africa is more important than the need to engage in the kind of gutter race-politics which belittle us as a people.

Whether it squares with Mr Xulu's base prejudices or not, the DA is a party which fully recognizes the untold damage wrought upon the black majority by the racist policies of the apartheid government. Indeed, every one of our policies seeks to reverse its effects, in order to give all of our people access to the means to uplift themselves, pursue their dreams, and reach their full potential. Had Mr Xulu taken but a cursory glace at our programme of action before penning this diatribe, he would know this.

And whether he likes it or not, research has proved that the DA is "probably the most multi-racial party that South Africa has ever known", proving Mr Xulu's callous assumptions about "the constituency they [the DA] represent" to be wholly without foundation and dripping with racist intent.

As to Mr Xulu's boasting about the need for "The Whites" to accept that "no amount of abusing or manipulating the judicial system, the watchdog institutions who are but toothless when it comes to matters which affect Blacks and the media plus all forms of communication channels, will sway the South African voters.", as a black South African I find it offensive the he considers having our constitutionally-enshrined rights protected to be something that does not affect us "as Blacks".

It is also very telling that he doesn't seem to care whether the institutions and systems that support our democracy and generate our wealth; that deliver justice; that provide health care and social services; that support all South Africans - but particularly the poor - actually work. All that matters is that the "right" people run them.

For example, "We urgently need to transform the economy so that it becomes representative of the demographics of this country". We do not, in his opinion, need to transform it so that more of the millions of desperate unemployed (most of whom are black) can find jobs; we need only transform it so that a black elite can replace a white elite.

It is because of this belief exemplified by Mr Xulu that, despite more than R150 billion worth of Black Economic Empowerment deals which have been undertaken over the past decade, more than 40% of our people still live on less than R370 (U$37) a month.

As to his claims about who is "abusing [and] manipulating the judicial system", he can only be referring to ANC President, Jacob Zuma, who faces 16 charges of money-laundering, fraud and corruption and whose lawyers have spent more than half a decade trying to stop the judiciary and the National Prosecuting Authority from doing their jobs. It seems that they may in fact have succeeded. Mr Xulu will no doubt trumpet this as a great victory and will not give so much as a thought to the damage this does to the integrity of our justice system.

In his entire diatribe, it is notable that Mr Xulu does not once mention the real problems that are facing South Africa today under an ANC government. In the perfect world of his imagining, everything is fine as long as the ANC is in charge. This, based on the dangerous and, frankly, ignorant premise that the ANC epitomizes and is representative of all black South Africans. It is not.

It does not matter to Mr Xulu that, under the ANC's stewardship, some schools receive Matric pass rates of 0% because teachers do not arrive for class. It does not matter to him that every day, 30 HIV/AIDS patients in the Free State die because the provincial health department manages its finances so badly. It does not matter to him that there are three South Africans on the Forbes Billionaires List for 2009, but that, fourteen years after the ANC government promised "A Better Life for All", 18 million of our people, most of whom are black, still live in grinding poverty.

Presumably, Mr Xulu would welcome the conclusion reached in the recently-released Local Government Budgets and Expenditure Review, published by the National Treasury, that more than a quarter of South Africa's municipal employees are in non-existent positions as "political" appointments, in defiance of official employment procedures. It would not bother him that, as a result, many of our poorest citizens find themselves without clean water, housing, working clinics or functional roads, because local government has now been "transformed".

Offensive as this piece is, we should, in fact, be grateful to Mr Xulu for laying bare the divisive and decidedly un-reconciliatory politics of the ANC; which, in its relentless quest for power and control of state resources would even seek to drive wedges between the people of this country.

Lindiwe Mazibuko is a spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance, and a parliamentary candidate for the party