ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman says that by calling some Eastern Cape migrants to the Western Cape “refugees”, Premier Helen Zille is saying they need a dompas.
In a tweet earlier this week, Zille wrote: “While ECape education collapsed, WC built 30 schools – 22 new, 8 replacement mainly 4 ECape edu refugees. 26 MORE new schools coming.”
The ANC and DA have been at each other’s throats over the cause of the riots in Grabouw this week, blaming each other for stirring up violence.
The violence escalated after three classrooms were vandalised at Groenberg Secondary, where protesters tried to set alight a textbook storeroom. Coloured residents blamed their black neighbours.
This, overcrowding at a predominantly black school and a coming by-election were cited by residents as reasons for the situation coming to a head on Monday.
Speaking at a public meeting in Grabouw on Human Rights Day on Wednesday, Fransman said “it was nothing but racism” from Zille when she used the word “refugees”.
He asked the crowd: “How can you be a refugee in the country of your birth?”
Fransman said that “on this day many decades ago”, people in Sharpeville had marched against the “dompas”.
"Zille, your underpants is hanging out en jou onderrok is vuil (and your petticoat is dirty).”
Zille said the real scandal here was that children could not get their right to quality education in most ANC-run provinces.
“The worst of all is the Eastern Cape. When people have to move to secure their most basic rights, they are not exercising a free choice – they are either effectively held hostage to poor education in Sadtu-run (SA Democratic Teachers Union) schools, or they can flee this untenable situation. The ANC should fix the education crises in the provinces they run before they try to deflect attention from it by playing the race card.
“They know there is a big difference between people who relocate because they have to and those who relocate because they want to.” - Cape Argus