Scathing retort to Mazibuko’s speech

It was a rough Valentine’s Day for DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko when she came under fire from the ANC’s big guns on Tuesday.

“The honourable leader of the opposition is not only grossly inexperienced, she is also hopelessly clueless,” said Public Enterprises minister Malusi Gigaba.

He was the ANC’s sweeper in the debate on President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address.

Mazibuko, who is serving her first term as an MP, shot up the ranks late last year after beating her veteran politician colleague, Athol Trollip, in a close contest to become DA parliamentary leader.

The “alternative vision” she spelled out for the country in her speech on Tuesday provoked scathing responses from both Gigaba and National Planning minister Trevor Manuel.

Manuel accused Mazibuko of dreaming after she spoke about bringing people together, bridging the racial and economic divide and achieving “lasting reconciliation” by providing people with “real opportunity”.

“Lindiwe, it’s not just about dreams, it’s about living out those dreams and making sacrifices,” Manuel said, quoting the Peter Tosh song on “everybody wanting to go to heaven, but nobody wanting to die”.

Gigaba described her speech as a “mere pipedream and incoherent wish-list”.

He said it had reminded him “of where we were in 1994 and how far we have progressed since then, when we still stood at the dawn of freedom”.

Zuma had taken the country “into the future” with his speech, Gigaba said.

Even DA leader Helen Zille had applauded his announcement of massive investment in infrastructure, and had urged the government to “cut the red tape” to create jobs, while a “camera-prone” (sic) Mazibuko had chosen rather to “please her constituency eager for doomsday news”.

Seizing on the discrepancy in their responses to Zuma’s speech on Thursday, Gigaba tried to drive in a wedge by referring to the “starkest contrast” between Zille, who as Western Cape premier had been exposed “to the challenges and intricacies of running a government” – and Mazibuko, “whose only experience is as an opponent who has never had to lift a finger to do anything”.

In another jibe at Mazibuko, who attended a posh girls’ boarding school, Gigaba referred to “those amongst us whose constituencies exist beyond the boundaries of suburban comfort” as properly understanding what was needed to allow all citizens decent work and dignified living standards.

But while she got no bouquets, Mazibuko will probably have welcomed the brickbats as preferable to being ignored. - Political Bureau