Zille falls flat on her face as time overtakes her

When Western Cape Premier Helen Zille announced her retirement as leader of the Democratic Alliance in 2015, the party's press statement quoted her saying: "I would rather err on the side of being ahead of my time."

But, as events have shown over the last week, this was not to be. Zille now faces a disciplinary inquiry which may see her finally unseated from a leadership role in the official opposition, thanks to an infamous series of tweets about the legacy of colonialism which, she argued, was not all bad.

Zille's Twitter finger has an unwavering sense of bad timing. In one example, the day after the local government elections she fired a Twitter broadside at protesting University of Cape Town students whose demonstrations had been a lightning-rod issue in the polls.

Her colonialism tweets were a gift to a beleaguered ANC as it faced swathes of criticism over its bungled handling of the social grants payments contract.

Now DA leader Mmusi Maimane and other party leaders have had to deflect attention from their attack on the ruling party to doing damage control on Zille's Twitter pronouncements.

For this critical misstep Zille should go.

But, that said, it is also wrong that her legacy be ultimately blighted by that pesky Twitter affliction.

The reinvention of the DA as a party with a broader base which now controls most of South Africa's major metropoles has much to do with her leadership legacy.

It is also deeply unfair to label Zille "a cold-hearted racist", as the EFF has done. She is, after all, the former journalist who braved the threat of a banning order to bring the world the truth about the murder by the apartheid state of Steve Biko.

But her presence and pronouncements appear increasingly at odds with the direction of the party she once led.

Alas, she is no longer ahead of her time, but lagging behind.