“Mmusi Maimane voted ANC in 1999 and 2004 and was quite happy with Mbeki, despite the fact that the latter’s Aids denialism cost the lives of some 365,000 black people. In 2009 he voted for COPE.

So it wasn’t until 2014 that he voted DA nationally. Three weeks later he became the party’s parliamentary leader, a quite absurd promotion.

He was an incongruous leader, vocally rejecting the theory of evolution and thus the whole Enlightenment tradition, arguing for demographic representivity and for making race central to the DA’s notion of social justice. Given this and the DA’s espousal of affirmative action and BEE, it is hardly surprising that the party attracted the sobriquet of ‘ANC lite’.

This was, of course, in line with the DA’s naive pursuit of identity politics which saw the party repeatedly confer power and responsibility on people with either no, or very shallow, roots in the party – Lindiwe Mazibuko, Mamphela Ramphaele, Patricia de Lille, Herman Mashaba and other iterations at provincial level. Some black voices have been raised saying that the DA set these leaders up to fail…”

RW Johnson’s wonderful opinion piece should be read in full on Politcsweb as ‘The DA Pays the Price’.

I add the question: “Why should Mmusi Maimane suffer more blame than Helen Zille who manufactured him. And surely those who voted for Zille’s return, a possible attempt to secure their salaries, should also share in that blame?” The greatest lesson history teaches the observant few is that history is rewritten by those with the most money behind them.