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Maimane is isolated and cheated. The so-called friends of Africans are ready to dump him like all other black leaders they dumped before
It is inescapable to believe that the DA is meant to be led only by white people, despite its claim of being an equal-opportunity party.
It must come as no surprise that Mmusi Maimane joins the list of black leaders who will suffer the indignity of an unpleasant exit from a leadership position.
Like the colours of the rainbow, the colour scheme of the DA is clearly pronounced.
The only real difference between the DA and the rainbow is that the rainbow did not wish to change and not be what it is.
The fact that black women leaders such as Lindiwe Mazibuko, Patricia de Lille and Phumzile van Damme rose and fell so quickly tells it all.
Of course, Helen Zille will tell you that context matters. Indeed it matters and, in this case, the context is that the DA is in fact a white party.
The existence of black people within the DA depends on whether they fit into the thinking of the party’s powerful white lobby.
The DA spiritedly tried to win the hearts and minds of the black majority through some sophisticated black leadership rental schemes.
They are those fellows who reminded us about those “good” aspects of colonialism and worked hard on accommodating the less racist membership part of the National Party.
They are the crew who parachuted Mazibuko into a leadership position and later confined her to Harvard University to learn the manners to appreciate when “baaskap” gives you the privilege to be a rented face of an otherwise white political party.
De Lille was cajoled to auction her Independent Democrats for the mayoral chain of Cape Town under some strict supervision of the real owners within the DA.
Maimane was the DA’s loudspeaker on corruption, but he didn’t know that he had a short battery life.
It was easy for a black man to convey the message of the oppressor that black people cannot rule themselves.
In the meantime, he was feted and lived the lavish life.
Then entered the SA Institute of Race Relations (IRR), a long-time pretender and apologist of white supremacy.
The DA could no longer contain its anxiety over having a white party being led by a black man who, after all, was unable to convince the majority of black voters to follow the delusions of this rent-controlled black leader.
Alan Winde, the premier of the Western Cape, was always going to be a good excuse to demonstrate white excellence.
In the name of good governance, Maimane was exposed as a beneficiary of his scripted noise about corruption.
The timing of his exposure cannot be an accident.
He tried to rein in his boss lady. It was inevitable that he was going to pay for that.
Mazibuko would have told him what it means to suffer from memory loss, even for a moment.
It is not a shock that Zille joined the IRR and that it said what it said about a white man reviving the fortunes of the DA.
After all, the DA, even with its supposed black leader, always remained in white control.
It is like the rugby team that has a black captain just to give some face to transformation.
Maimane obviously did not read about the “so-called friends of Africans”.
He is also delusional to imagine himself in full control of a white political party.
The DA has always been and will always be a white minority party, just like the Freedom Front Plus.
Maimane deserves punishment for losing more than 400 000 votes in this year’s election.
He must also be punished for failing to come clean and condemn BEE and convince his black brothers and sisters that BEE is bad for his masters.
He must be punished for forgetting that he was rented and owed his existence as leader to his landlord, who gave him a room and not the whole house in which to stay.
Maimane is so naive not to recognise that there is a strong lobby of a coalition of the wounded caused by his confusion of refusing to remain a little puppet for his masters.
The fact that there was even talk within the DA of forming a breakaway party – and Zille was seen as the prospective leader of that – must have been the clearest warning shot for him.
Only those who lived under the mistaken impression that the DA was ever about inclusiveness must be shocked that Zille and all the frontrunners for the most powerful position of federal executive chair are white.
Just a reminder that Zille and those vying for the powerful position have not acquitted themselves well on whether they fully support nonracialism.
The DA itself will not categorically state that it is wholly nonracial and nonsexist. It uses fancy language to disguise its distaste for true equality.
What the DA wants is coexistence, with whites in charge and blacks at their mercy.
The methods used by the DA to appoint leaders are structured to achieve the true purpose of white dominance.
The many reported incidents of allegations of racism within the DA leadership have not been seriously denied, for obvious reasons.
Author Anna Barnes captured it well when she described racism as “a virus of sorts exhibited in the body language, speech and isolating attitude of racists”.
There is no doubt that whatever is happening to Maimane is calculated to isolate him. The actions and statements of the white cohort in the DA tell it all.
The old discredited leaders of the DA are in full throttle doing the bidding for the white agenda to regain control of their lost white identify and power.
Maimane and many other black people in the DA have cheated themselves and continue to be cheated by the white people in the DA.
The DA used Maimane to lead the fight against what it saw and wanted to project as ANC corruption, while trapping him by keeping him as a politician funded by those who collapsed Steinhoff – the white version of VBS Mutual Bank.
The DA cannot claim ignorance that its leader was a beneficiary of a VBS type of arrangement.
The silence of the DA was deliberate and the benefits Maimane received were always going to be used against him.
Maimane is isolated and cheated.
Reports that former leader Tony Leon is one of those who approached Maimane to persuade him to step down, if true, must not come as a surprise.
Maimane should have long realised that, in real terms, he is on a fixed-term employment contract in the DA.
Many other black leaders learnt the hard way that they had similar fixed-term contracts, but they cannot approach the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration when unfairly dismissed.
He is in a constructive dismissal situation that he cannot avert.
Maimane and all the other black people within the DA are the unequal members in a sophisticated, pretentious project. Like the homeland puppets, he will suffer the inevitable.
Of course, he deserves no sympathy at all.
He is like homeland bigots who sold their souls to please a white minority that designed schemes to continue our oppression.
The punishment the DA metes out to the pretentious black people in its ranks is well deserved.
The DA must isolate them more to teach them that a leopard never changes its spots.
They chose to put their fingers in the fire to prove that fire burns, despite many warnings not to.
Mannya is an advocate and writer
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