HELEN ZILLE: Clash of cultural values

When I wrote a Facebook post about Jacob Zuma (the person not the politician) recently, I knew I was stepping into a crocodile-infested swamp. Addressing the role culture plays in the destiny of individuals, groups and nations can be a “career extinction” event in these woke times.

Bryan Rostron’s article is a case study of its own in condescension, using that lazy phrase “tone deaf” to critique my analysis of the disjuncture between Zuma’s traditional values, and the principles of a modern constitutional democracy (“Zille’s condescension is blind to Zuma’s very modern corruption”, July 14).

I had to laugh. “Tone deaf” is exactly what they called me when in 2009, as leader of the DA, our election slogan was “Stop Zuma!” Both the DA and I were pasted by the pundits. I wasn’t reading the public mood, they said. The DA would never get the votes of black people if they have slogans like that.

That sentiment, of course, was the height of condescension, both to black voters and to the DA. The DA’s role is to tell the truth, to spot the trends, and to project our analysis into the future. Many black voters support us precisely for this reason. We leave it to most “political analysts” to expediently parrot the mood of the moment.

It may surprise Rostron that not everyone defaults to the values of individual liberty, free speech, public accountability, gender equity, the separation of party and state and so forth. In fact, large numbers of South Africans reject these foundational constitutional values. And the Zuma I know, as kind as he was to me, is one of them.

This is a country where at last count (2018) there were 13 kingships and 844 senior salaried traditional hereditary leaders across eight provinces, paid from the public purse. This should focus our attention on just how many people (outside the Western Cape, where Rostron lives) are ruled by a system effectively beyond the protection of the constitution as we understand it.

And just how profound the clash of cultural values at the heart of our society really is. It is not condescending to say so. It is a fact. And unless we face it now, and deal with it, this disjuncture will catch up with us. Predictably, when it does the political commentators will pretend they invented this insight.

They should perhaps pay more attention to the trending hashtag #WenzenuZuma? (What has Zuma done?). Rostron’s patronising Shakespearean quotes won’t give them the answers they are looking for.

Helen Zille
Chair, DA federal council

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