DA caucus chairwoman in firing line

DA leader Mmusi Maimane and caucus chairwoman Anchen Dreyer.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane and caucus chairwoman Anchen Dreyer.

Published Jan 23, 2016

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Johannesburg - The ANC has hit back after DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s speech on racism this week, following up complaints to the Equality Court against MP Dianne Kohler Barnard and Nelson Mandela Bay councillor Chris Roberts with an accusation that DA caucus chairwoman Anchen Dreyer attended a celebration of boer hero and Transvaal Republic president Paul Kruger.

The event, hosted by Solidarity, was held in Centurion on Kruger’s birthday on October 10 and the ANC in Parliament said it had a picture of Dreyer next to a poster reading “Lekker verjaar Oom Paul!!” (Happy birthday Uncle Paul) and that she had addressed the event on behalf of her party.

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ANC caucus spokesman Moloto Mothapo said “Kruger Day” had been “one of the racially divisive apartheid-era holidays which were abolished after the advent of democracy in 1994”.

“However, there exists a minority that is still stuck in the past, clearly battling to accept our country’s new non-racial democratic dispensation, who are continuing to observe this apartheid holiday to this day,” he said.

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Dreyer did not answer her phone on Friday, but DA spokeswoman Phumzile van Damme said the MP, who is also a member of Parliament’s ethics committee, had told her it was an Afrikaans cultural event that had happened to fall on Kruger’s birthday.

“We appreciate and acknowledge that people have different cultures and there are different things people hold dear. We can’t walk around with a pen and decide what aspects of people’s culture they can’t celebrate,” Van Damme said.

The country had a “rich and complex history” that could not be wished away.

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“Rather, the injustices of the past must be recognised and learnt from. And those who violated the rights of our fellow South Africans must be remembered for that crime too,” she said.

Regarding the picture of Dreyer, she said, “Saying ‘Happy birthday Paul Kruger’, does that make you racist?” Reports at the time described the event as a summit titled “Toekomsberaad – Helpmekaar 2020 (Future Summit – Help Each Other 2020), aimed at creating a vision for the future of Afrikaners, including establishing an Afrikaans university.

Solidarity chairman Flip Buys told delegates the five-year plan was not aimed at “taking us back to the past but building a better future”.

“It is not an attempt to isolate ourselves and set up parallel government structures, to polarise the races, form a laager or an apartheid volkstaat,” he was quoted as saying.

The row follows Maimane’s speech at the Apartheid Museum in Joburg on Tuesday. There he announced the party would require members to sign an anti-racism pledge, including that they would not “perpetuate racial division” or “undermine the dignity of my fellow South Africans”.

On Thursday, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe laid a complaint in the Western Cape High Court against Kohler Barnard, who was expelled from the DA after sharing a Facebook post calling for the return of apartheid strongman PW Botha, before she was reinstated on appeal.

The ANC also laid a complaint in the Port Elizabeth High Court against Roberts for calling fellow councillor Mongameli Bobani a “bobbejaan” (baboon) during a debate in July, along with one against estate agent Penny Sparrow in the Scottburgh Magistrate’s Court in KwaZulu-Natal for referring to black beachgoers as monkeys.

Mantashe said in his founding affidavit the post shared by Kohler Barnard constituted hate speech and discrimination under the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.

She should pay R500 000 to an organisation promoting non-racialism and be prosecuted.

The ANC sought similar relief in the cases of Roberts and Sparrow.

Political Bureau

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