A Cape Town DA councillor, Siphumle Yalezo, has asked his party leader Helen Zille to explain her “educational refugee” comments better to black residents.
“There is unhappiness, but she’s defending the statement. I understand the context (in which it was said), but the term is unjustified,” said Yalezo.
Zille has come under fire from a number of quarters for describing children who moved from the Eastern Cape to Western Cape for schooling as “education refugees”.
In her weekly newsletter on Sunday, Zille dismissed her critics, describing the brouhaha around the issue as meant to provoke “pseudo outrage”.
But Yalezo, who is a proportional representative councillor living in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, said explaining the context of what Zille meant did not satisfy his community.
“I’ve debated with so many leaders in the community, and I’ve tried to explain what she meant.
“But defending her, I was attacked, even by my own family,” said Yalezo.
Now he says, some in his community, particularly those from the ANC, have tagged him as “Zille’s refugee”.
And though most of his family were outraged by the comment, Yalezo said as “a fighter for the DA” he would not let up.
He said not all children who moved to the Western Cape from the Eastern Cape could be termed “educational refugees”.
“I’m from Keiskammashoek in the Eastern Cape and arrived in Cape Town in 2001. I was not displaced by a bad education (system). To generalise and say all the schools in the Eastern Cape are in a disastrous state is wrong,” said Yalezo.
But his council colleague and fellow DA member Vuyokazi Matanzima described herself as one of the “refugees”.
“I was a teacher in the Eastern Cape and came to Cape Town for better services. I came to Cape Town to seek refuge, I have no regrets and that goes for many people.”
DA Youth chairwoman Mbali Ntuli, who is also a councillor in eThekwini, said she was not offended by the “refugee” comments.
“Unfortunately the way our country is, those comments will be construed as racist,” said Ntuli.
DA leader in the Eastern Cape legislature Bobby Stevenson said the issue was not Zille’s comments but the scandal surrounding the quality of education in the province.
“Millions of learners in this province are getting a rotten education which condemns them to a life of poverty.”
In her newsletter, Zille said the attempt to “prove” she was a racist shifted focus away from and buried the failures of the Eastern Cape government.
She conceded that she had been a “chop” to have created the opportunity for “pseudo outrage” from her opponents. - Cape Times
Cape Times