GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Maimane’s unthinking machine
Mmusi Maimane’s personal and relentless drive to turn the DA into an ‘activist organisation’ has cost it intellectualism and thought leaders
DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s speech to the Western Cape congress at the weekend was filled with the right convictions as he sought to address internal party conflict. Factionalism is the price one pays for incumbency and the DA has now been in charge of Cape Town and the Western Cape for a decade and seven years respectively. So, it is perhaps to be expected that division is beginning to rear its head in the province. The lead-up to the provincial congress was fraught, nothing like what we are seeing in the ANC, but acrimonious nonetheless. Maimane was right to address it in a forthright manner. He said the party would not tolerate those who mobilised around race. "One of the things we stand for as a party is the abolishment of all forms of racial nationalism, and we cannot allow even the smallest element of this to creep into our language and our internal campaigns," he said.Good stuff, although somewhat hypocritical from Maimane, given that much of his own election revolved largely a...
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