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Showing posts from August, 2019

Helen Zille and the fake liberals: Part 2

In my  previous post  I wrote Helen Zille and IRR et al are not true liberals.  I continue with this theme. In an article first published in Rapport where she’s a regular contributor, Zille wrote of South Africa’s “ culture of unaccountability ”.   Quoting her “lodestar” political analyst and writer Francis Fukuyama, she said a “democratic society must get three key things right: the rule of law; a capable state performing its functions reliably and efficiently; and a deep-rooted culture of accountability, a deceptively simple formula [that’s] how devilishly difficult it is to achieve” Indeed, for her it is because as I said before, despite presenting herself as having an “innate understanding of good governance, a liberal principle, in key areas she herself failed” in her role as premier of the Western Cape.   I mentioned two examples but there are others. As she indirectly says, the test of liberalism is defending freedom of speech, accountabil...

Helen Zille is no liberal.

This is the text of a letter I wrote to Michael Morris[1], the Institute of Race Relations' head of media, to his op-ed in Daily Maverick. I read your response to Ismail Lagardien's critique of Helen Zille[2] on Daily Maverick today.  I thought of writing but they rarely publish letters[3] from Joe Soap. And like most of South Africa's media, fear and resist the free and robust exchange of ideas in readers' comments (to another article, the editor noted they're neither left nor right leaning , however, restricting free speech is typical of both the far left and right). While I disagree with Lagardien’s generalisation, as the socialist I suspect he is, about "liberal" economics, I agree Zille has moved to the right. I've been saying so since c2011 when my concerns about her matured, long before it become de rigueur and when she was considered an oracle and darling by those who criticise her now that she’s no longer premier and "opinionista...