Maimane sees red over guesthouse ban on blacks

File photo: DA leader Mmusi Maimane

File photo: DA leader Mmusi Maimane

Published Jun 24, 2016

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Johannesburg - DA leader Mmusi Maimane has called on South Africans of all races to boycott a KwaZulu-Natal guesthouse after its owner refused to accommodate “blacks and government workers”.

“This is unacceptable and I urge all black, white, coloured and Indian South Africans to be united and stay away and not book at this guesthouse,” he told The Star on Thursday.

This week, André Slade, who runs the Sodwana Bay Guest House, told Sizakele Msimango, who tried to book there, that “it’s God’s law” to segregate people by race.

“We do not accommodate blacks or government employees any longer,” he replied in an email response to her reservation.

In his blog Wheretofromhere.org, Slade refers to Maimane as a “beast” and “little bastard”.

But Maimane said he was not deterred by the hateful comments. “People call me all sorts of things, but it won’t stop me from fighting for a non-racial South Africa.”

However, what irks Maimane is that Slade uses religion to justify his ideals, which the DA leader says is “completely misleading”. He said: “His comments can’t be further from the truth because God created all people equally.”

Maimane said his office would lay an official complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).

But he isn't the only one angered by Slade’s hurtful comments.

Msimango was left shocked after the 52-year-old man sent her a terse email in response to her booking.

“I was so angry,” said Msimango, who emailed Slade to book for 12 people after she and her cousin found the guesthouse - whose tagline on the internet is “Better than home”.

Scores of people have since lambasted the self-proclaimed “King of the Zulu/Heavenly Kingdom”, since a screen shot of the email to Msimango as well as a video of The Star interviewing him were posted on the newspaper’s social media sites on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

In the video, he can be heard saying he was aware that the constitution did not allow discrimination based on race, but he followed only one law.

“Well, according to your constitution, perhaps yes, but we work according to God’s law, and according to God’s law, we have to have some sort of segregation between the creation that He left here... the law you have in South Africa is Satan’s law.”

SAHRC spokesman Isaac Mangena was not immediately available for comment.

There have been several highly publicised racial incidences this year. These include those involving KwaZulu-Natal real estate agents Vicki Momberg and Penny Sparrow.

In a video that went viral last week, Momberg was caught on a cellphone camera using the k-word in the presence of police after she was a victim of a smash-and-grab incident in Joburg in March.

Acting police commissioner Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane’s spokeswoman, Brigadier Mashadi Selepe, said at the time that the police were investigating.

Sparrow, who likened black people revelling on public beaches to “monkeys”, was ordered by the Umzinto Equality Court to pay a R150 000 fine.

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