20 January 2016•Update: 20 January 2016
By Hassan Isilow
JOHANNESBURG
The leader of South Africa’s main opposition party on Tuesday told racists not to vote for his party weeks after one member made racist comments on social media.
“If you’re thinking of voting for the DA and you are a racist, please don’t vote for us,” Musi Maimane, who heads the Democratic Alliance, said. “We are not a party for you.”
Speaking at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Maimane was reacting to the online remarks of Penny Sparrow, a party member who compared black South Africans to monkeys in a Facebook post.
Sparrow, an estate agent in KwaZulu-Natal province, lashed out at blacks she accused of littering a Durban beach on New Year’s Day.
Her comments generated condemnation across the country that emerged from 46 years of apartheid in 1994.
“We must be angry at acts of people who are racists,” Maimane, who became South Africa’s first black main opposition leader, said.
The DA, which used to be viewed as a white-oriented party, made history last year by electing Maimane to replace Cape Town Premier Helen Zille.
The party, which is competing in local elections later this year, is steadily gaining support among the country’s black elite who are impressed with its level of accountability and professionalism.
Maimane said racism served to open the wounds of its victims and expose the ignorance of those who perpetuate it.
“Racism robs us of the dignity that many South Africans fought for,” Maimane said. “It divides us.
“There is no place in the DA for people who believe that the color of their skin renders them superior to others.”
He added: “We need to call out people on their behavior, even when confronting them will make us feel uncomfortable.”
Sparrow’s comments are among several recent incidents highlighting racism in South Africa.
In October, the DA expelled lawmaker Dianne Kohler Bernard after she shared a social media post in which the author said public services where better during the apartheid era.
She appealed her expulsion and was reinstated to the party in December.
Earlier this month, Durban businessman Justin Van Vuuren described blacks as animals in a Facebook post and last week Nicole de Klerk shocked racecourse goers in Cape Town by hurling racist abuse at black racing fans.
In the same week, a black government employee, Velaphi Khumalo, was suspended after posting that black South Africans should do what “Hitler did to the Jews”and cleanse the country of white people.
“It is equally important to acknowledge that racism is not the preserve of one group,” Maimane told the audience. “To say that black people are not capable of prejudice is its self a twisted form of racism.”
