Cape Town -
Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu was forced on Thursday to withdraw her remark to a joint sitting of Parliament calling DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane a native for hire.
Sisulu duly retracted the remark after National Council of Provinces chairwoman Thandi Modise said there was nothing unparliamentary about the term native, but found that the context in which the minister used it was offensive.
“If you, however, put these words together in one sentence... as the minister put it, it is offensive and may allude to the stereotype that natives are always for hire,” Modise said.
After Maimane's maiden speech in Parliament in the debate on President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address, she said he had had his dream of becoming premier of Gauteng shattered since the ANC won that province.
In the offending remark, she then went on to suggest that he had now been hand-picked by DA leader Helen Zille to do her bidding “now that madam has found another hired native to play second fiddle”. - Sapa