SOWETAN | DA leader’s comments offensive

Our politicians should never be allowed to get away with making reckless and insensitive statements laced with racial undertones.

One such politician that we must take to task is DA leader John Steenhuisen for his unacceptable behaviour at the weekend when he ridiculed people’s circumstances for cheap politicking.

Addressing his party’s so-called crime awareness rally outside Soshanguve police station on Saturday, Steenhuisen took aim at the ill-advised Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s crime wardens programme by disturbingly targeting its beneficiaries.

Not only did heSteenhuisen target the jobless, unemployed, mostly black youth from townships in Gauteng, who took part in the programme by disparagingly mocking their circumstances, he also relied on stereotypes to further denigrate them.

“What did Panyaza Lesufi do? He took your tax money to buy ill-fitting PEP stores uniforms for untrained cadres and pretended that they were crime wardens. What kind of person pulls a drunkard out of a shebeen, gives him a uniform and a weapon and then unleashes them onto a community,” Steenhuisen was quoted as saying.

His insensitive and highly offensive comments were posted on his party’s official X [formerly Twitter] account where he has been deservingly receiving a backlash. At the time of writing this editorial, neither Steenhuisen nor his party had apologised for his stupid remarks.

They can therefore be understood first to reflect Steenhuisen’s attitude and the posture of his party towards those who are trapped in poverty and are forced by their economic circumstances to buy uniforms at PEP stores.

This was also perhaps underscored by the cheering he received from those in attendance when he launched such an unwarranted assault on the poor.

Second, the comments have exposed how Steenhuisen is far removed from the reality of most South Africans, who are black, and rely on shebeens he so despises to survive.

Also, problematic and dangerous is Steenhuisen’s generalisation that assumes every unemployed person, especially from a township, is a drunkard. Steenhuisen’s comments are deplorable, more so coming at a time when parties are trying to win over  voters the political temperature is high in the run-up to the elections.