Helen Of Da: The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships Of Ignorance

By Joburg Post

Recently I decided to be nostalgic and watch Brad Pitt’s movie “Troy”. The movie based on the story of Helen of Troy, who given the love triangle between herself and her suitors Menelaus, King of Sparta and Prince Paris of Troy caused the Trojan war between the Greeks and the Trojans. The story of Helen of Troy and the demise of the Trojans inspired the 17^th century poetic figure of speech “The face that launched a thousand ships". The movie got me thinking about South Africa’s own Helen (Zille). She helped strengthen the Democratic Alliances as an opposition power, cementing its status as the official opposition to Africa’s oldest liberation movement, the ANC. However, over the years while her party attracted some black middle class votes and maintained their white base, she and many of her “comrades” revealed their problematic thoughts on transformation, Apartheid and colonialism.

Helen of DA, time and time again through the stronghold of twitter has written tweets that expose a fallacy in the DA’s commitment to a transformative agenda. To borrow the phrase from Kevin Hart - “let me explain”. Firstly, while many  within the leadership of the DA have distanced themselves from her views on colonialism, there is a pattern of thought that runs in many DA liberals, one is that the denial of race and its manifestation on the South African economy and societal structure. The denial stems from the lack of appreciation on the impact of firstly Apartheid and to greater degree colonialism. Time and time again I have heard some die hard members of the DA argue away the significance of these crimes against humanity by making the argument that the 1994 dispensation was a magic wand and that now we need to move to a humanist agenda. This humanist agenda of denying race and embracing a class struggle seeks to divert people from reconciling the race division of factors of production and how this has fed the continued conditions of poverty in black society. The challenge of Helen of DA and her followers is that they have not and perhaps cannot divorce themselves from the benefits of white privilege and that this has fed their lack of understanding the need of transformation that empowers those races that for 300 years have been the victims of a tragic injustice.

Yes, some of you will ask “but Musa surely the DA supports black economic empowerment?” and my response to that is that well, they may support the principle of it, but the party scrambled their articulation of support, first arguing against and then later - to not be on the wrong side of history - for it and affirmative action. This mash up highlighted that the party still battled with its demons and this highlighted the influence of white support base in delaying clear policy imperatives in line with where the nation is. Moreover, another realm of ignorance is the manner in which the party attempted to make Nelson Mandela their own image. This launched a scuffle between it and the ANC. Many argued the ANC was wrong for trying to lay sole ownership of Mandela and his ideas, but I argue that it was equally insulting for the DA to hold on solely to the Mandela of 1994 for clear political reasons, without appreciating the revolutionary Mandela; the Mandela who was the volunteer-in- chief in the defiance campaign, the Commander-in-chief of Umkhonto weSizwe. They fail to recognise that the rainbow nation Mandela was not by any stretch of the imagination a race denialists and that he supported very much so the transformation agenda of the ANC. It is Mandela who called on us to “forgive BUT NOT FORGET” but time and time again in conversation I hear members of the liberal agenda say “Musa we must ‘move’ on from the past”. They have through their ignorance about the personhood of uDalibunga, sold themselves a false narrative that will continue to undermine their attempts to rid themselves of the perception of “being a white party” with a capitalist agenda that doesn’t really push for the upliftment of black people. I have argued with a high ranking member of the DA, that the failure of the DA to educate itself and its broader support base about race issues and why 23 years later we simply cannot forget, will rob it of ever truly breaking into the black vote and thus may harm any attempt to unseat the ANC in 2019.

A friend of mine asked me “Musa, given the tweets by Helen of DA and the slap on the wrist sanction they gave her, would you vote for them”?  I said hell no, we as a people can tolerate corruption, but racism is one thing we will never tolerate! The DA by keeping her has done more than just insult black people, but they have empowered a thousand ships of ignorance among their liberal white voters who still battle to understand the ramifications of colonialism and white privilege on the livelihoods of black people. Furthermore, it has damaged attempts to inculcate an understanding on how white privilege; itself is a danger to white people, as the patience of black people in the streets of Langa, Alexandra, Diepsloot and the far corners where poverty rears its ugly face remains a norm. These conditions breed a space where radical and violent ideologies will continue to rise in popularity and we could, maybe not now but in future have our own Zimbabwe experience. When that day comes remember I wrote about the story of Helen of DA, the face that launched a thousand ships of ignorance!

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