Zille digs up files on Mashaba, asks him about Orania seminar ‘under your leadership’

Following Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba’s resignation, for reasons primarily related to what he calls the DA’s shift towards the “right wing” after the election of Helen Zille as the party’s new federal council chairperson on Sunday, Zille has taken to Twitter in an attempt to prove a point she made yesterday on radio, that Mashaba is, in fact, more “right wing” than she is.

Zille has posted several tweets in an apparent attempt to cast Mashaba as a hypocrite, one of which sees her question if he allowed a seminar to take place in Orania – known as a whites-only town although a former spokesperson has denied this – under his leadership of the Free Market Foundation.

Mashaba’s office responded to requests for comment by saying the mayor made his views clear in his resignation speech and has asked the media to use it as his official comment for the time being.

The DA federal council chairperson also dug up a tweet in which Mashaba said Zille was not racist, and that anyone who accused her of racism was supposedly racist themselves.

In March this year, Mashaba tweeted: “In all the years I have known Helen Zille, including reading extensively about her beautiful life, anyone calling her racist is actually racist herself/himself.

“Helen is one those [in] SA I personally hold with the highest esteem. I am proud of her as my fellow [South African]. Period,” Mashaba added.

Zille also retweeted a column from 2015 in which Mashaba calls BEE and other race-based policies a “cancer”.

Not everyone was on board with Zille dropping files, with one user calling her “petty”, adding that she should let the matter go as she had won.

READ MORE: Mashaba is ‘significantly to the right of me’ – Zille

“I call out hypocrisy wherever I see it. When I get called a racist publicly by a person who seven months ago said I was the dead opposite, I have a right to point this out. I was slagged off on every public platform. Do you call that winning? Nice,” was her response.

Another user said her tweets made it appear that “uGogo just had tea mixed Viceroy brandy this morning”.

“Lol. I wish,” was her response.

During an interview on 702 on Monday, Zille said Mashaba had always been further to the right of her.

“Herman Mashaba has always been significantly to the right of me, when I was one of the people who was helping recruit Herman to the DA, I said to my colleague, he’s far to the right of us, he was president of the free market foundation. I could almost say a free-market fundamentalist.”

She added that he didn’t believe in social grants at the time and that they decided to encourage his leadership in the DA despite this.

“Everyone agreed it was enough in the ballpark to recruit him and that he would be a fiery and strong supporter,” she said.

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