The Democratic Alliance’s new parliamentary leader, John Steenhuisen, is polite, reasonable, open to persuasion and likeable. He is a gentleman. These are obviously subjective judgments on my part, and many would both agree and disagree with me.
First, I asked Steenhuisen this past week on The Eusebius McKaiser Show whether he agrees with Makashule Gana, who is competing with him for the interim leadership position, that race should or can be a morally and politically defensible tie-breaker between two candidates who are both technically more than qualified for a particular post, including that of leader of the DA.
The only difference between Zille and Steenhuisen is rhetorical. Steenhuisen, mindful of how thoroughly divisive Zille has become in recent years, will toss out phrases such as not being “from the Helen Zille school of politics” to indicate some political discomfort with her position in our political landscape.
It is far easier to waspishly dismiss a critic, to say that critics hate the DA or to assert that critics do not speak for all black people. It is trite that not one single person, including social science researchers, speak for every member of a socially constructed group. That is a cheap high school debating move to make in race discourse in South Africa. Finding me a few black people who agree with you does not win the argument.
What you, as Steenhuisen need to grapple with, is why it is so triggering for you to talk race? Why is it galling or threatening to describe the victims and survivors of apartheid racially? Again, the political thought of Zille and Steenhuisen here are exactly the same.
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