Sometimes politicians need to have their Twitter accounts taken away from them.

We see it daily across the pond in America, and we have seen Helen Zille drop the ball in a big way with her recent tweets on colonialism.

Of course that has put a certain Mmusi Maimane in a tricky position, something that political commentator Eusebius McKaiser highlighted in a Mail & Guardian piece titled ‘C’mon Maimane, grow a pair‘.

Before he gets to Mmusi, Eusebius has some choice words to say about Zille:

Enter Helen Zille with foot in mouth. In this former leader of the Democratic Alliance we have a peddler precisely of the offensive view that colonialism is complex and nuanced and that there is no moral black and white here.

Except there is moral black and white here. Complexity should not be a smokescreen for selling us a romantic revision of colonialism’s inherent violence and thoroughgoing evil.

By pretending that colonialism can be opened up for debate, Zille is pretending that some positive remarks can be made about colonialism.

Is Zille ignorant? I do not think so. She is well read and educated. Her problem is not ignorance.

Zille was instead simply parading a deeply held belief that we should be grateful that we have infrastructure because of colonialism. This is nothing less than white supremacy revealing itself.

Don’t hold back, pal.

So onto the bit about Mmusi and needing to grow a pair:

The political question now facing the DA’s Mmusi Maimane is this: Will he grow a pair or will he pretend that Zille was misunderstood? Will she get a mere slap on the wrist or will there be a decisive break with the party’s fledgling record on questions of race and historicism?

2019 is around the corner.

In a month where 17 million South Africans are unsure as to whether or not they will receive their social grants, and the (at least) 100 mental health patients who died in the Life Esidimeni tragedy still fresh in the memory, the DA should really have been sitting pretty watching the ANC scramble.

Can they afford another Twitter tirade to tarnish the party? Big calls to be made.

[source:mg]