[imagesource: Ruvan Boshoff]

Last month, Helen Zille released #StayWoke: Go Broke: Why South Africa won’t survive America’s culture wars (and what you can do about it).

Bit of a wordy title, and an adult using a hashtag in the title of a book irks me, but you’re not here for my review.

Writing for The Daily Maverick, Richard Poplak has reviewed Zille’s latest work, and he’s clearly not a fan.

Before we dive into that, we should add that the book seems to be doing rather well, with Zille tweeting this out last week:

Thanks so much @ExclusiveBooks Cavendish. This news made my week. Nice to be beating Jordan Peterson, Michelle Obama and Malcolm Gladwell. pic.twitter.com/kwXxoCLIKO

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) May 12, 2021

Peterson’s book was published in 2019, and Obama’s in 2018. I guess that’s some staying power.

A little from the book’s blurb, too:

Have you been “cancelled” by an online mob that won’t stop harassing you until you’re fired from your job?

Helen Zille almost was – but she survived by fighting back.

In #StayWoke: Go Broke, the bestselling author and defining South African political figure explains why the woke Left constitutes a greater threat to South Africa’s future than the populist Right does.

Alrighty then.

Off we go with some excerpts from Poplak’s review:

Due to the curtailment of free speech and free thought, she’s written a new book that is now available for purchase everywhere, and is also easily downloaded by anyone with the money or the inclination…

“#Stay Woke” has the frays-as-you-touch-it quality of a Zairean textbook, as if publisher Obsidian Worlds knew they were producing something illicit and shameful.

…#Stay Woke is a very American attempt to replace failed political ideology and implementation, not with better ideas, but with a series of  “cultural” whipping posts, the same Fox News beats that are endlessly litigated in the conservative US press. She decries race-obsessed Wokeists while being entirely race-obsessed. She warns against Twitter while relentlessly focusing on Twitter…

She loathes the victimhood and grievance game, while playing the perpetually aggrieved victim.

He’s not holding back.

And he’s not done, either:

In all this, she comes off like a grumpy grandma drinking her seventh glass of sherry while slowly knitting an AR-15, whisper-shouting about the misbehaving Wokeists, lamenting the loss of the Marlboro Man and real able-bodied cis-het humans. It’s funny until you realise that South Africa desperately needs a viable political opposition.

Read this way, #StayWoke is not a farce, it’s a tragedy. As usual, Helen Zille has her Marxism, along with pretty much everything else, ass-backwards.

Therein lies the kicker.

Zille is currently the Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance, with the party struggling in some recent elections.

We desperately, desperately, need a strong opposition party in this country (not the EFF, thanks), in order to maintain the pretence of holding the ANC to account.

In order to grow, or at least negate the votes the party is losing to the likes of the Freedom Front Plus, the DA needs to broaden its appeal to non-white voters.

Somehow, I’m not sure this book is going to help the DA’s attempts on that front.

[source:dailymaverick]