DA Federal Council chairperson Helen Zille is a mouthpiece who seeks to sow discord in the Government of National Unity (GNU), according to ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, who urged South Africans not to take offence at her remarks because his party is leading the pack.
He was responding to Zille’s remarks that there was no GNU, an assertion echoing ex-ANC president Jacob Zuma.
In a video clip that has gone viral on social media, Zille explains that the DA and ANC entered into a coalition “from the beginning”.
“President Cyril Ramaphosa came up with this notion of a Government of National Unity, which he thought would be a better way of selling the concept of a coalition to his own party,” she said.
“A Government of National Unity brings all the parties together that would include the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) and MK Party (Umkhonto Wesizwe Party), which it did not,” Zille said.
“But it still gave the president the fig leaf he needed to bring in all sorts of smaller parties to say ‘I’m not in a coalition with the DA’,” she said.
“Now the truth is that we (DA and ANC) are actually in a coalition because a coalition means that if a party withdraws from the coalition that the party falls.”
Mbalula said it was Zille’s job and that of other political parties to speak ill of the ANC in a bid to dethrone it.
“We are a leading party, the largest one, the biggest expression of the will of the people. We are not going to be engaged in polemics with Zille or whoever wishes.
“Stop being irritated by Zille every time she says she wants to see the ANC dead; it is her job, like all others.”
Mbalula assured the people that the GNU would speak in one voice, despite the negative talk from other parties or individuals. “GNU will speak in one voice in relation to government progress,” he added.
The GNU concept was introduced by Ramaphosa after the ANC lost the majority in the May 29 national and provincial elections.
Mbalula said this kind of talk was among the tactics to derail the ANC and they wouldn’t have stopped, even when they were not in the GNU. “The ANC will go down if it entertains the irritation and does not do what is right.”
In response to Zille, Patriotic Alliance leader and Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton Mckenzie said: “Withdraw and we will still be standing as the GNU, your inability to be part of anything whereby you don’t exclusively call the shots is senile.”
Cape Times