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Udo W. Froese Afrika the Other Side
Picture this, you land at Cape Town’s international airport on your way to the beautiful “mother city” of South Africa.

Strikingly, you first see a sea of shacks as far as your eyes stretch.

The people living there are indigenous black Africans, living in absolute squalor.

Welcome to DA Province, proudly presented as a success, a city that works…or so it’s propagated.

South Africa’s former, recalled president Thabo Mbeki quoted a Stellenbosch University academic, Amanda Gouws, referring to the utterings of the DA, that his remarks were racist:

“The struggle against racism will be with us for a long time. This is because the racist legacy of colonialism and apartheid will be with us for long time,” Mbeki stated.

Mbeki went further in his reference to the DA leader’s accusations when he stated that there were “some” who felt that black South Africans should say nothing about the hurt they felt because it was “a denial of the search for national reconciliation”.

He described those accusations as “a deceitful political manoeuvre to achieve political gain”.

Colonial-apartheid-UDI-structured-poverty was always used to not only confuse Africans, but also to mislead the white mindset with inaccuracies.

The founding of South Africa’s Democratic Party, the Helen Suzman Foundation and their leadership, are just two of such examples.

The Democratic Party (DP), or as it wants to be called today, the Democratic Alliance (DA), was founded in the opulent Saxonwold, Johannesburg villa of apartheid rugby boss and senior member of the “Afrikaaner Broederbond”, Dr Louis Luyt.

Luyt was the apartheid president of the South African Rugby Union (SARU), at that time being a racist apartheid organisation.

He was also involved in the Information Scandal in the 1970s under the late Prime Minister John Vorster and Cabinet member, Dr Connie Mulder — he, who once said on SABC TV news that there will be no blacks living in South Africa, motivating the creation of Bantustans.

The late Dr Connie Mulder is the father of the Mulder brothers, who lead the Freedom Front Plus (FF+).

Mulder senior’s cohort in the Information Scandal was one Dr Eschel Rhoodie. Luyt founded the South African English daily newspaper, “The Citizen”, with Information Scandal funds, made up of hundreds of billions of stolen and laundered taxpayers’ money. Luyt’s drive was to give the ruling apartheid Nationalist Party government an English daily platform to support the “Sunday Times”.

Another founding father of the Democratic Party was a former chairman of the powerful, exclusive Afrikaaner Broederbond, then also rector of the Randse Afrikaanse University (RAU, today University of Johannesburg), Dr Wimpie de Klerk.

He subsequently became editor of the Afrikaans Sunday paper, ‘Rapport’.

The late Wimpie de Klerk was the brother of former apartheid president, FW de Klerk.

A former executive director of the powerful Anglo American Corporation (AAC) and DeBeers, also member of the apartheid parliament for the white opposition party, the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), the late Dr Zach de Beer, counts among the founders of the DP/DA.

Apartheid ambassador to the Court of St James in London, Dr Dennis Worral too formed part of the founding team.

Another member of the white opposition party, PFP in parliament and co-founder of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA), the late Afrikaaner academic and multi-millionaire businessman, former rugby player, Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, made his contribution.

So too did the attorney from Randburg and member of the SABC board, Wynand Malan, also member of the Afrikaaner Broederbond.

It was clear; Zach de Beer was the link between South Africa’s powerful private business sector, Anglo American Corporation/De Beers and the owners of the mining industry on the one hand. On the other hand, exclusive apartheid political power worked hand-in-hand with the covert support of the international West.

The Democratic Alliance was known from its inception, as a joint venture of influential white-owned business and exclusively white-controlled power.

Founding mother, Helen Suzman with a foundation in her name, the ‘Helen Suzman Foundation’, was a powerful lobby.

It promoted the principles of a “US-approved, Western-style, neo-liberal capitalist democracy for Africa”.

PFP MP Colin Eglin with Zach de Beer were Suzman’s colleagues in Cape Town’s parliament. The former Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) MP, Patricia de Lille joined them.

It makes sense that De Lille returned to her real home, the DA, via her political creation, the ‘Independent Democrats (ID)’.

Suzman, through her party political seat in Johannesburg’s most affluent suburb of Houghton, had groomed Tony Leon.

Brothers Tony and Peter Leon are the sons of the retired South African judge, Ramon Leon.

During apartheid, Leon senior was was feared as “hanging judge”.

Tony Leon, who took over from Helen Suzman, had celebrated between 1975 and 1977 the SADF in its official magazine, “Paratus”.

In those days Tony Leon called a military detention centre at Voortrekkerhoogte outside Pretoria, where torture and chemical castration were practiced, “strictly regulated and humane”.

In his articles for the apartheid army, the former DA leader, Tony Leon, described the SADF’s illegal invasion of Angola as “one of many splendored tasks of the army”.

Helen Zille followed Tony Leon as DA leader. Zille’s claim to fame is that she was a journalist for the folded ‘Rand Daily Mail’ newspaper, having had reported on the murder of the BCM leader, Bantu Biko.

Meanwhile, DA leader, Helen Zille, speaking a lot of broken Xhosa, became South Africa’s corporate media darling. She feels entitled to use the late Mandela’s image, the struggle songs and the clenched fist salute to win voters for the DA. Would that not be opportunistic plagiarism to gain power?

Leon and Zille’s unprincipled and racist concoction, the DA, is indeed just that.

Their history is based on lies.

Udo W. Froese, non-institutionalised, independent political and socio-economic analyst and columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.