The Indian community recently commemorated the arrival of indentured labourers from India to South Africa. The period between 1860 and 1911 and the growth of this community over time - including the various contributions to our country’s freedom, growth and development - is replete with a rich and evolving history. This includes recognising that we are all united in our diversity.
During last week’s sitting of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, the “green” MK Party showed its usual intolerance and bigotry – this time when one of their members, pointing at me, spoke of “you Indians”.
While his derogatory remarks, tone and gestures were withdrawn after the Deputy Speaker’s instruction to do so, the withdrawal was clearly not genuine in both tone and demeanour. This is typical of the MK.
It is rich for the MK to claim to be the champions of all KZN’s citizens when many of its members repeatedly display such disdain, ill-will and abhorrence of our province’s rich diversity.
They forget that their party leader, generally considered to be a constitutional delinquent, worked closely with a few Indian brothers to loot state coffers. So bad did their rampage become, and for so long did it last, that those Indian brothers were also alleged to be eventually appointing the nation’s cabinet ministers.
Our province and our country continue to reel from this spate of state capture crimes, bad governance and what is now clearly a dictator-like leadership style – the sum of which reminds one of a mafia movie, heavily involved in the drug trade and extortion. It is little wonder that the MK has even said we should stop referring to the construction mafia as such.
The MK’s repeated displays of prejudice, discrimination and antagonism in the KZN Legislature is a clear display of their anti-constitutional anarchist aims. The more we observe them, the more we realise that they are indeed the most real and most significant threat to our democracy.
The wisdom of the parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU) and Government of Provincial Unity (GPU) to keep the MK out of government cannot be over-emphasised. The alternative would have been catastrophic and it is a relief that they are safely on the opposition benches, doing very little and offering nothing more than hot air and cold war era drivel.
The DA in the GPU is satisfied that the trajectory of KZN’s government is heading in the right direction, is solid and is stable. Finally, we remember the words of Maya Angelou when she said: “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible”.
DR IMRAN KEEKA | MPL and DA chief whip in the KZN legislature
***The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media or IOL.***
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