We’ve seen this movie before… at least that’s what it looks like as yet another high-flying African in the DA is brought crashing to earth.
And, as the party gears up to contest the local government elections this year, there must be those genuinely asking whether the party is one run by whites, for whites.
That is why it is interesting that an insider in the DA’s “black caucus” insisted to us that the drama around MEP Karabo Khakhau withdrawing from the race for deputy chair of the party’s federal council is about compliance with party rules – and not about race.
Khakhau said she was disqualified from the contest because the party denied her a letter of good financial standing after her “tithes” – or contributions to the DA from her parliamentary salary – were, at one stage, not up-to-date.
This had since been rectified, but she was still not granted an exemption.
In a letter to fellow “Democrats”, Khakhau said she was running to help reshape the organisational culture of the DA.
“No party would succeed without mobilising the majority of voters and said that base is black, young and female,” she said.
That makes it plain she believes that, as a representative of that base, she is being sidelined.
That happened in the past to a list of black politicians in the DA – and the party has always maintained their parting of ways had nothing to do with race.
The more this happens, the more that explanation rings hollow.
Khakhau is correct when she points out that the DA treats different people in radically different ways.
The party shouldn’t dismiss yet another incident like this as inconsequential.
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