Cape Town – Democratic Alliance (DA) federal council chairperson Helen Zille has ruffled some feathers following her comments on ubuntu.
According to The Citizen, it all started when Zille weighed in on the 2021 Booker Prize Winner Damon Galgut’s novel The Promise, which is a novel that focuses on chronicles of a family from the late apartheid era through to Jacob Zuma’s presidency.
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Zille took to her Twitter page to reveal that a friend whose opinion she trusts had suggested that she reads the book.
“The review made it seem like one of those caricatured novels about the racist Afrikaners vs the virtuous rest — the kind of ‘four-legs-good-two-legs-bad’ race essentialism that dominates current thinking in the Anglosphere,” wrote Zille about the book in a tweet.
She continued: “Then a friend, whose opinions I value, said he rated it an excellent book, so I re-entered it on my Christmas reading list. I’m glad I did. It showed me how misleading a review can be. The writing is supreme, and I found myself reading sentences over and over again,” wrote Zille in a tweet.
3/ Then a friend, whose opinions I value, said he rated it an excellent book, so I re-entered it on my Christmas reading list. I’m glad I did. It showed me how misleading a review can be. The writing is supreme, and I found myself reading sentences over and over again.
— Helen Zille (@helenzille) December 27, 2021
However, it wasn’t until she added that she is looking forward to a brave writer who is willing to write about “bogus ubuntu”, that South African Twitter users came hard on her.
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“Now I am looking forward to the writer who is great and brave enough to write the novel that will expose the myths that we once believed about South Africa and truthfully examine why they turned to dust, including the sentimental bogusness of notions like Ubuntu,” Zille wrote.
4/ Now I am looking forward to the writer who is great and brave enough to write the novel that will expose the myths that we once believed about South Africa and truthfully examine why they turned to dust, including the sentimental bogusness of notions like Ubuntu.
— Helen Zille (@helenzille) December 27, 2021
Take a look at some of the Twitter reactions below:
Your anger is unmatched, Helen. That you still manage to breath with such anger inside you, will forever remain a mystery??
— Philani Sikho (@SikhoPhilani) December 27, 2021
Just because YOU don’t understand Ubuntu doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You’re a broken woman Helen
— Natasha (@dramadelinquent) December 27, 2021
I fully agree with Helen Zille this bogus “ubuntu” notion has forced most Africans in this country to forgive people who never asked for forgiveness
— Mncedisi (@khayelitshakapa) December 28, 2021
There is an entire South African & Pan African section Fiction & Non fiction that you can read, with the “brave” storytelling of this country but because they aren’t a white man telling an African story, winning a eurocentric prize, suddenly there aren’t enough good writers?
— ?StrawFurball? (@strawfurball) December 28, 2021
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Picture: Twitter/@helenzille
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Compiled by Sinothando Siyolo
