Kohler Barnard sharing PW Botha post undercuts Maimane's hope for change: iLIVE

02 October 2015 - 16:31 By Majola Majola, a Singer, Songwriter, Playwright and actor
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Image: Die Burger/Media24/ Gallo Images

Mmusi Maimane is in the process of fingerprinting his leadership presence within the South African landscape.

His emphasis on “we”, each time he speaks on behalf of his organisation suggests that he is an inclusive leader. However inclusive he may be the buck stops with him as the leader.

His vessel sails in the most turbulent times regarding racial related issues. General Montgomery believes leadership to be the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.

Mr Maimane’s capacity and will rallied me to compose a song aimed at winning hearts and minds in a common purpose of placing power in his hands in the 2014 provincial and national election.

30.78% of voters in Gauteng displayed confidence in him as I proclaimed with conviction “Believe in Change”. It is now clear that had that change occurred he wouldn't have ascended to power alone, he would have been accompanied by “we”.

In the party’s membership ranks there are former administrators and sympathisers of the now fallen Apartheid system.

A system that cruelly crippled the dreams of my parents and those of their parents before them, and as a dreamer I cannot conceal my anger nor am I able to restrict my mind from painting a portrait of how the “we” is shaped visually.

White people like Paul Kirk, who have the audacity to publicly declare that they prefer an inhumane system which destroyed many lives, form part of the “we” in that portrait.

White people like Dianne Kohler Barnard who publicly sympathise and then do an about turn claiming that they misread the statement, when illiteracy and miseducation were in fact gifts by Apartheid to black people, people like her form part of the “we” in that portrait.

White people who are closeted sympathisers of the statements form part of the “we” in that portrait.

The “we” referred to could have been faces in portfolio portraits hung in state owned buildings right across Gauteng.

Mr Maimane’s capacity and will which rallied me to compose a song for him, is exactly what is needed to unite most white people in a common purpose of ridding themselves off the superiority complex they were socialised in, might I add for their sake first before it is for the sake of their black counterparts or South Africa.

As his Political mark aptly descends unto history’s pages, the sole purpose may be he is here to transform white people’s superior mentalities, which further inhibit the realisation of fully integrated society. If he is able to achieve that, only then will the ideal of non racial South Africa seem farfetched to most black people who endure systemic degradation daily on the basis of their race.

Ipsos.co.za reports that the DA’s membership profile comprise of 50% of white South Africans while blacks make up 20%, 50% are Afrikaans language speakers.

Therefore the majority of the members may been direct participators or are inheritors of the apartheid system. The majority members of the Democratic Alliance happen to be the country’s minority but are wealthier than the majority who bear the face of poverty in this country, poverty that was created by the very system that is wished back by a white man who benefited from it, supported by a high profile member of the DA.

The organisation’s 2029 vision document states that in 2019 the party rose to lead a coalition government after having recognised the unjust legacy of inequality created by Apartheid. As disheartening as it is that this recognition will be made 25 years after the birth of democracy, yet it affords Kohler Barnard with leeway to remain apathetic about inequalities until the 2019 deadline has been reached.

The way ahead forces Mr Maimane to adopt in his leadership vision words by Rosalyn Carter’s words when she says “A leader takes people where they want to go, a great leader takes people where they don’t want to go , but ought to go."

The members of the DA want to end up in the Union buildings so they can “fix” socio-economic inequalities, but Mr Maimane ought to lead them to deeper realisation with regards to black people’s pain and that the causes of that pain are the same ingredients to their happiness in the privileged lives they lead.

To fully understand what life is like for most black people who are trying to build their lives without any inherited tools to make that process more bearable. If Dannie Kolher Bannard remains a central part of your “we” , I will have to assume that rebuilding black people’s dignity is not at the top of your priorities.     

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