Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen attracts a truckful of criticism on social media, in parliament and in the press for his numerous gaffes (he referred to his ex-wife as “roadkill”) and his failure to grow the party in a meaningful way.
He has now shown that he more than deserves this criticism by appointing Roman Cabanac, a man who posts racist messages on social media and flirts with and involves himself with anti-Semites, as chief of staff in his office at the ministry of agriculture.
Steenhuisen is not a leader. Not for today, not for the future. His stewardship of the party of the great Helen Suzman has trampled on her legacy and walked away from its antiracism and its fight against anti-Semitism. Today, the DA finds itself more in harmony with the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party than it does with Suzman’s party of the 1970s and 1980s.
Steenhuisen is the same leader on whose watch one of its new MPs, Renaldo Gouws, has been exposed as saying “Kill all the k****rs” in a video clip from 2012. The DA under Steenhuisen is still putting him through training inparliament and has not lifted a finger to fire him.
The DA cannot and won’t fire him. That’s because Gouws and Cabanac are the mainstream of Steenhuisen’s party now. By appointing Cabanac — in the wake of the Gouws scandal — the DA leader is merely continuing with the implementation of Steenhuisen’s agenda.
There are many more like these two in the DA back rooms and in its support base.
The actions and decisions of leaders define them. Choosing to appoint a man who ascribes positive and negative characteristics by race, the core of what is called racism, says a lot about the loud-mouthed nonentities such as Cabanac and Gouws. It says a lot more about Steenhuisen. It says he is a leader whose claims to liberalism are a sham and a lie. It says he is a leader for some and not for all. It says whatever positive traits his party may display, he is not fit to lead it.
It says that when Solly Malatsi and Siviwe Gwarube walk into a room, all that Steenhuisen sees are what BJ Vorster and Hendrik Verwoerd saw when a black man stood before them: an inferior being.
These appointments say even more about the DA’s supporters. They are happy with their leader appointing a man who is on record saying these hateful things to his ministerial office. They are comfortable with a man who uses the k-word to insult and denigrate black people being an MP of the DA.
What is next? Cabanac has a history of inviting Nazi sympathisers to his online shows. I wonder what Jewish DA members have to say about this. I wonder what they think Helen Suzman would say about this. Yet they keep quiet and support Steenhuisen in his spinelessness in not distancing himself from and dealing with these developments. Well, believe me when I tell you this: Cabanac and Gouws are calling me by the k-word today and you are quiet. They will be marching on your house tomorrow wearing their swastikas. Anti-Semites and racists are identical twins.
Whenever black people raise issues of discrimination and outright racism we are inundated with messages from the DA about how the ANC — and blacks in general — are living in the past. Forget the past, they say. Let’s move on, we are told. Let’s build together, they say. Nowhere do you hear these messages as often as you get from the DA.
Yet it is this same DA that will not let us forget the past as it appoints people who take the faces of black people and rub them in the faeces of the past. A man who uses the k-word liberally is swanning about as a DA MP and the party says, ‘move on’. My word.
It is very clear that a party that encourages such positions is not a party for the future. It is clear why, when the ANC has been such an abject failure at governing this country and growing its economy, the DA has not managed to at all see significant growth. People can clearly see the Verwoerd inside the DA, hiding in the back. The populace wants no truck with such hateful people.
The future of South Africa is with a nonracial, centrist coalition that includes large chunks of the Ramaphosa ANC, the young of RISE Mzansi and BOSA, a small chunk of the DA that finds the likes of Cabanac and Gouws disgusting, and many non-racist centrists who are part of the millions who have rejected political parties in the recent elections. The DA of John Steenhuisen is not part of that future.
Anti-racist DA members should be shocked by these latest developments in their party. Suzman is turning in her grave. They should fire Steenhuisen.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.