The Big Read: DA's Black Hope must act

06 October 2015 - 02:05 By Justice Malala

Mmusi Maimane faces a key moment in his leadership of the DA- he has to throw Dianne Kohler Barnard under the bus. He has to do it soon, and ruthlessly, otherwise it is he and the DA who will reap the negative consequences of her actions.Everything about Maimane's rise to the top is about race.Those who pushed him forward did it because of the race issues in the DA and the belief that he can turn around the persistent association of the party with our apartheid history.They believe that, without a black leader of the party, the DA has reached a ceiling and will not be able to attract more than the 22.2% of the vote it attracted in May 2014.To them, growth lies in the black constituency.Maimane, the suave boy from Soweto, is their Gerrie Coetzee: just as the boxer Coetzee was the Great White Hope, Maimane is now the Great Black Hope.For the blacks who have gone in with the DA, he was the black guy who spoke like them, thought like them and looked like them.Now he is faced with a scenario that puts his hopes, and the hopes of the many who were beginning to see themselves as DA voters, in jeopardy.His actions over the Kohler Barnard issue will have a profound effect on his future as party leader, on his own standing on the race issue and on the party's prospects.Last week it emerged that Kohler Barnard shared a Facebook post by journalist Paul Kirk in which he declared: "Please come back PW Botha - you were far more honest than any of these [ANC] rogues, and you provided a far better service to the public ..."This is the nub of the DA's problem. For years it has been seen as a party that tolerates racists and those who hanker after the apartheid past.For years it has not acted with ruthlessness against those within its ranks who flirt with the apartheid past.Say what you will about Kohler Barnard and her actions, there is no running away from the fact that her re-posting of that racist and offensive post buttresses those perceptions.Many good people have fought to reverse exactly those perceptions from the DA. Maimane is one of them. His very presence at the apex of the party has been roundly acknowledged as an attempt to reverse the perceptions.And so what happens when, on his watch, a senior DA leader associates herself with the hurtful and offensive vitriol spewed by Kirk?Maimane gets called all sorts of names: a front, an empty suit who is putting an acceptable shine on the "real" racist heart of the DA.His actions will determine whether he wears that cap for the rest of his tenure and whether his tenure will be short.Over the weekend it was reported that Kohler Barnard has been demoted from her senior police post to being the DA's deputy spokesman on public works.It is unclear if this was part of the punishment for her actions, but it is nowhere near enough.In fact, it is such half-hearted gestures that make the DA's stance on racial issues laughable.What could be worse than to applaud Botha, a man who detained 8800 young people between June and December 1986?Human rights groups said 390 of those were children under 16 - one was 11 years old, and several were 12 or 13.Kohler Barnard essentially re-posted an article idolising Hitler.Maimane needs to do two things. First, he needs to demonstrate that he is in charge of the party. He needs to demonstrate that he is now at the helm, and not Helen Zille or anyone else.Whatever happens to Kohler Barnard, it needs to have his hand visibly on it.She cannot leave the party because a disciplinary committee says so. She has to leave because Maimane says that racism, and associations with it, will not happen on his watch.This is crucial because Maimane cannot run away from the fact that he is a black man.It is crucial because every flirtation with racism and apartheid by a party leader diminishes him and his prospects. It diminishes his humanity.Maimane has to call Kohler Barnard in and make it clear to her that she has to resign. Immediately.She must not wait for a disciplinary hearing.If Maimane does not do this, he can give wonderful speeches and they will mean nothing.He will forever wear the tag of a man in office but not in power or in charge. He will be an empty suit.Last week, Julius Malema said his Economic Freedom Fighters will overtake the DA as the official opposition in 2019. Well, if Maimane continues to act in a lily-livered fashion on this issue, Malema will be proved right...

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