Kohler Barnard has truly sunk the DA - Cope

Dianne Kohler Barnard “has truly sunk the Democratic Alliance (DA)”‚ the Congress of the People (Cope) said on Friday‚ and how it handled it would be an “acid test” for leader Mmusi Maimane.

Cope used the controversy surrounding the top DA figure’s sharing on social media of a journalist’s post praising apartheid-era president PW Botha to reiterate why it would never couch with its fellow opposition party.

“There is a view in certain quarters in South Africa that Cope should allow the DA to swallow it up‚” the former’s Dennis Bloem said.

The party‚ he said‚ is “fully and irrevocably committed to non racialism”.

“The DA‚ throughout its short existence‚ has failed to shrug off the suspicion that it is a white people’s party pursuing an agenda for the retention of white privileges‚ said Bloem.

“Put differently‚ it is still seen as a party antagonistic to black hopes and black progress. Kohler Barnard‚ for all her profuse apologies has truly sunk the DA.”

Maimane and former party leader Helen Zille have said Kohler Barnard’s actions “were indefensible”‚ but Bloem said “they need to demonstrate how indefensible those actions were”.

“Kohler Barnard has committed a heinous faux pas. How and to what extent the DA distances itself from that will determine how and to what extent we as a party can co-operate with the DA in the future.

“Cope has consistently maintained that we could never be part of any political party that was still clinging to the past because of the painful memories that it still has for us.

"For DA leader Maimane the crisis caused by Kohler Barnard is going to be an acid test of his leadership and a reflection of exactly where the DA stands on the role of the arch proponents of apartheid.” -RDM News Wire