Madiba’s ideals and those of the DA are poles apart Lehlohonolo Nyetanyane, The New Age, Johannesburg, 21 July 2016 “I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a free and democratic South Africa in which all people live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal I hope to live for and to achieve. But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” The quote is an extract by Nelson Mandela during the 1964 treason trial in which he was the first accused. I deemed it pertinent to invoke the quote after the DA chose to use Mandela’s pictures and voice for their local government election advertisements in which they rubbish ANC as betraying his legacy. Let me take a telescopic view down the memory lane and remind DA party leader Mmmusi Maimane what Mandela stood for and what his party stood for in its previous life as the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) and what it currently stands for. Mandela was commander-in-chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC military wing established in 1961. He was a revolutionary, advocating guerrilla warfare tactics against the apartheid regime. He did not approach the Cape High Court for intervention. He understood that freedom was worth fighting for. Unlike the DA’s ancestor Helen Suzman, Mandela was prepared to die for freedom and did not share a platform with PW Botha in the tricameral parliament. The DA, a successor of the PFP, had only seven MPs in the first democratic parliament in 1994. Their seven MPs, who included Dene Smuts and Douglas Gibson, opposed Mandela on everything he represented. Mandela was prepared to die to forge harmony among all races. It is therefore an affront that a party which had the racist Penny Sparrow on its books could claim to cherish Mandela’s legacy. Sparrow described black beach-revellers as monkeys. Squalor, hunger and despair on the other side of N2 from Cape Town International airport where the DA is in charge, are the result of inequality, certainly not the equal opportunity that Mandela was prepared to die for. Let me also remind Maimane and his acolytes that, unlike them, Mandela didn’t believe in federalism but in a unitary state with equal opportunities for all. In his last years of his life, Mandela said: “When I go to heaven I will look for the nearest ANC branch and join it. If I can’t find one, I will launch one myself.” If Maimane led a party founded on African values, he would know the wishes of the departed are sacrosanct. The DA would have known that using Mandela voice-over for election advertisements was blasphemous. Louis Luyt, whose Federal Alliance merged with the Democratic Party in 2001 to form the DA, had taken the same Nelson Mandela that the DA now holds in high esteem, to court. Mandela had instituted a commission of inquiry in 1997 to investigate racism and nepotism at Sarfu headed by Luyt. Typical of the DA’s modus operandi, Luyt challenged Mandela in court. Mandela was resolute in his fight against white domination in rugby. The DA believes in capitalism which they sugarcoat as a free-market system – while Mandela was a socialist at heart. This is the Abathembu heir who founded the Nelson Mandela Foundation in 1995 and contributed one third of his salary to the philanthropic organisation. Mandela was a proponent of BEE and affirmative action, which the DA’s mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba opposes. Before branding themselves as legitimate custodians of Mandela’s legacy, perhaps Maimane and others should have paid Mandela’s widows, Graça and Winnie, a social visit. Where I come from, one doesn’t claim to respect the deceased and neglect their surviving next of kin. Money spent fighting SABC’s Hlaudi Motsoeneng and President Jacob Zuma in court could better be invested in the Nelson Mandela Chidren’s Hospital to achieve Mandela’s cherished ideals. • Lehlohonolo Nyetanyane writes on social affairs • See also: Mandela and Castro: Friends, Comrades and Allies <http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Mandela-and-Castro-Friends-Comrad es-and-Allies-20141205-0028.html> From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/21072016/epaperpdf/18.pdf __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 13836 (20160721) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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