DURBAN - THE DA in KwaZulu-Natal refuses to bow to pressure after public outcries denouncing the Phoenix election posters bearing the message “ANC called you racists, DA calls you Heroes”.
Dean Macpherson, the provincial leader of the DA, told the Daily News that the posters were part of their election campaign and will be rolled out across the city of eThekwini.
According to Macpherson, the posters were his party’s response to the ANC which had spent the last three months calling anyone who defended their community racist, no matter where they were.
Macpherson was referring to the July unrest which allegedly saw some of the Indian community groupings targeting Africans in Phoenix, resulting in the stabbing and shooting of dozens of people in the area.
“This is going across the city and has elicited a hysterical response from the ANC who can’t now decide if they called people racists or not. They must either say they did or did not. The only people making this about race are the ANC and this does not mention Phoenix once.
“Communities did the job of the police who abandoned them when the ANC went to war on the streets of Durban and they are heroes.”
Asked whether the remarks on the DA posters were not in contrast with the much-desired social cohesion after the horrific killings of the African people in Phoenix, Macpherson defended his party and said that the DA was against racism.
“We are on record and have publicly said that anyone who has committed a crime must be held accountable but, what we won’t accept, is the ANC blanketly labelling communities as racist to hide behind the violence and looting they subjected the city under,” he said.
The ANC criticised the DA for putting up election posters with a “racial slur”, stressing that this had the potential to stir up further racial polarisation in the region.
Daily News