LETTER: Why Mmusi Maimane does deserve the FNF’s freedom award
The chair of the DA Student Organisation in the Western Cape responds to Gareth van Onselen’s criticism of the party’s leader
In his gratuitous criticism against DA leader Mmusi Maimane the South African Institute of Race Relations’ (IRR) Gareth van Onselen follows the false subjective reasoning that has come to characterise those who “police” blackness and are loosely referred to as “woke”. In his piece, “Why Maimane does not deserve the Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s (FNF) freedom award”, Van Onselen laments, among other things, Maimane’s “absence of bravery on issues of free speech, individual liberty and on policy positions”.
Of course, these claims are nothing but exaggerated nonsense coming from an individual who appears to believe that he has some ordained authority to determine what is liberal and what isn’t. To criticise an award recipient by simply highlighting few and far between aspects of their discourse and without considering their full contribution to their field can only be described as either mischievous or myopic. However, it is important to note that criticism levelled against awa...
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