POSTER WARS: The ANC has hit back at the DA's campaign to claim Madiba as one of the party's heroes. POSTER WARS: The ANC has hit back at the DA's campaign to claim Madiba as one of the party's heroes.
Cobus Coetzee
THE ANC in the Western Cape says it wants to reclaim its liberation history from the DA.
It launched its own liberation history campaign with the slogan: “So many (anti-apartheid leaders) of our own. No need to borrow” at the party’s Freedom Day rally at the Good Hope Centre on Saturday.
ANC provincial secretary Songezo Mjongile said the poster was in reaction to the “Know Your DA” campaign launched two weeks ago.
The DA released a pamphlet two weeks ago showing Nelson Mandela and Helen Suzman embracing, with the words “We played our part in opposing apartheid”.
The pamphlet identified Suzman as founder of the DA.
Mjongile said the ANC “must reclaim its liberation history from the DA” and stressed that neither Suzman nor Mandela were members of the DA.
“The DA doesn’t have a history of fighting apartheid. It was created after ‘verkrampte’ (conservative) elements of the National Party joined the liberals to form a party at the right,” he said.
Mjongile said the party had started to distribute the pamphlets to branches to help inform its members and communities of its liberation leaders.
The campaign celebrates anti-apartheid activists like Ashley Kriel, Dulcie September, Mildred Lesia, Mandela, Chris Hani, Joe Slovo, Albert Luthuli, Albertina Sisulu, Johnny Issel and Oliver Tambo who are on the poster.
ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman told ANC supporters at the rally that people must be reminded of the real DA and that its predecessors participated in, and attempted to give legitimacy to, apartheid.
“Don’t try to steal our messages, our history of struggle and the symbols and icons – our Struggle heroes,” he warned the DA.
“Let the DA come clean. They must grow their own leaders and not claim Struggle heroes.”
DA leader Helen Zille said that the DA “can’t sit back and allow the ANC’s propaganda to falsely paint the DA as the party of apartheid”.
She was speaking at her party’s Freedom Day celebrations in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal.
“Many of our current members and leaders were involved in the struggle against apartheid – either as part of the parliamentary opposition like Helen Suzman or as part of extra-parliamentary organisation such as the ANC, PAC, United Democratic Front or Black Consciousness Movement,” she said.
Zille said she was saddened that Suzman was not recognised for her courage and that some ANC leaders belittled the contribution she had made.
“The DA has also made it repeatedly clear: racists of any kind are not welcome in our midst,” she said.
cobus.coetzee@inl.co.za