DA is just the Nats in disguise

INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

Police were preventing DA leader Helen Zille and her entourage from approaching President Jacob Zuma's homestead in Nkandla. File photo by Leon Lestrade.

* Phatse Justice Pitso is a former ambassador to Cuba and a member of the ANC writing in his personal capacity.

The leader of the DA, Helen Zille, has predicted that her party will be the government of SA by 2019. The question we all ask is whether the DA is a genuine and legitimate representative and custodian of the true values and ideals the people of our country aspire to achieve. The absolute answer is a big NO.

The DA has no political and moral authority to be in the forefront of our struggles to lead the people of our country into the future.

Our country cannot be led by a lobby group whose preoccupation is to protect and defend the interests of the monopoly capital, mostly in the hands of a few white males, who as a result of the decades of apartheid power relations are predominantly in ownership of the commanding heights of our economy.

The DA is on the warpath to undermine the impact of the legacy of colonialism.

The successive elections held in the recent past of our democratic dispensation have proved that the overwhelming majority of the people of our country reject the fallacy that the contradictions arising out of the centuries of domination by the forces of imperialism and colonialism can be resolved within a period of 18 years.

The leadership of the party must come to terms with the realities that our people are more than ever before determined to realise their everlasting dream of building a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society

Surely the reservoir of our memories will always remind us of the DA as an irrelevant political formation whose core values are the antithesis of the true wishes and aspirations of our people.

The posture of the DA in both its content and form is that of an offspring of the chief architects of the apartheid policies.

In the eyes of the millions of the people of our country, it is a mirror that reflects the apartheid structural economic arrangements that over the years were designed to serve the needs of the white community at the expense of the black people who make up the majority of the population of our country.

Our people understand the complex question that the theory of development of the nation confirms the notion that it is the historical developments, not the racial characteristics, that define the path for the development of any society.

The demagogic tendencies by the DA, therefore, of decorating itself with vulnerable black faces to gain political legitimacy and authenticity proves the point that it is still far from abandoning its racial tendencies.

The structural composition of the DA depicts a political formation that has a white head while its legs are black.

Most of the marches, pickets, door-to-door activities are attended by vulnerable black people, while the strategic boardroom issues are the domain of the white bosses.

The people of our country cannot be fooled by the trappings of the racial composition of the leadership echelons of the DA, but the extent to which it is committed to resolve the socio-economic challenges emanating from the realities of our historical question.

We expect the DA to take full responsibility for the massive challenges of poverty, disease and underdevelopment that have over the years become the principal characteristic of the SA society.

It is, therefore, absurd of Zille and the leadership of the DA to blame our national liberation movement and the people of our country for the unprecedented socio-economic problems facing our people as a result of the consequences of our historical past.

The essence here is that the DA is instigating the millions of the working class of our country to turn their backs on our national liberation movement.

These desperate attempts and manoeuvres to blame the government for the economic atrocities of the past is the major source of instigation of the violent service delivery protest marches sweeping across our country.

We see counter-revolutionary elements damaging and burning our inadequate infrastructure such as schools, clinics and roads during these protest marches.

We are at a turning point of a complex revolutionary situation of a transition in the current phase of our struggles of building a new society from the foundations of apartheid colonialism.

The enemy will leave no stone unturned to derail the massive investment initiatives such as, among others, the expansion of our infrastructure on rail and roads development, national health insurance and the review of the willing-seller willing-buyer policies.

The Star Africa