Bra Mmusi must put whites in their place

Before the political storm that was Diana Kohler Barnard's Facebook post expressing admiration for PW Botha, I had written this letter to Mmusi Maimane.

If my advice was ever relevant, it is now. I hope he'll take to heart what I say.

Dear Mmusi Maimane

From a Dobsonville laaitie, to spokesman of the official opposition, to the amper (almost) premier of Gauteng, then parliamentary leader of the official opposition, and now to leader of the DA. By any standard you have outdone yourself.

Very few politicians across the political spectrum can tell of such a meteoric rise to power and prominence. I am pleased that in what should be the most hotly contested political environment you have shown your mettle.

Mmusi, my bra, I need to be frank with you.

You are going to have to be firm with the whiteys. You have now removed them - at least theoretically - from the last corner, the DA, where they maintained the old South African baasskap (dominance).

I know that this is not the narrative that you want to be seen to be supporting but I have no time to dress it up at the moment.

Look at how this fellow Allister Sparks rained on your parade.

I am trying very hard to be polite here but this ostensible veneration of (Hendrik) Verwoerd was a gigantic stuff-up and this is the one time you should have come out guns blazing and abandoned your polite self.

Your muted response to him bordered on defending his right to be so outrightly rude to you as a guest at your history-making moment. This showed you as weak and may well be a danger sign of how you are going to deal with the whites who will seek to put a rock in your path.

If you think Sparks was merely senile, as he claims in his post-stuff-up explanation, think again. Many who think like him are still lurking in your party and more surprises may be lying ahead.

As they say in Afrikaans: pas op.

You are involved in a revolution - changing a white party to black.

But frankly, the less black people think of you as just a token (or "commodity", as only Princess Lindiwe Sisulu can put it), and see you as your own man, the more chances you have to increase the black vote for your party.

Not haranguing Sparks was a missed opportunity. Black people with their scars of oppression would not mind seeing someone like Sparks being put in his place by someone like you.

You should have got every single DA leader to disown Sparks's sentiments instead of trying to be clever about it. Look, the fact that your delegates were clapping and cheering him did not help, no matter how it is explained away.

While Sparks is no Verwoerdian by any stretch of the imagination, it would be a mistake to think that was the point. Politics is not a platform for the intellectual, but a theatre of simpletons. So the simpler your message of hatred for apartheid, the better for the fortunes of your party. Just think of it this way - what possible translation can be taken from Sparks's statement than that Verwoerd was a good man?

Ask Mbeki about clever mutterings on HIV/Aids - the closest translation of his muddled message was that there is no HIV/Aids. So be careful.

A part of me was angry with Sparks for spoiling your Obama moment, being the first black DA leader. Zille did not have to deal with such nonsense when she became the first female DA leader. Imagine if a guest at her inauguration spat out sexist jokes, even if it was to predict that Zille would appoint an all-male cabinet if she was made president.

It would have been a disaster and Zille would have been thoroughly unkind to that guest so that she did not become the casualty of such utterances.

Sorry about this, but you are going to have to be hard-nosed to everyone, including your so-called black caucus. I am surprised that there is, in fact, such a thing in the supposedly colour-blind DA. This also assumes that there must be a white caucus.

Eish, Comrade, you are cooking a potjiekos of contradictions.

Overall I think you are a good guy and I personally wish you well. SA needs a strong opposition, given the complacency of the governing party. But, frankly, in our lifetime and generation, opposition is all you can realistically hope to remain.

Our voting patterns are still terribly entrenched in race and I would hate to see you whip up your beautiful wife's hope of becoming the first lady any time before she retires.

- Tabane is author of Let's Talk Frankly: Letters to Influential South Africans. This is an extract of a letter to Mmusi Maimane, taken from the middle to the end.