{"id":33636,"date":"2017-04-03T09:54:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T09:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/helen-zille-faces-disciplinary-action-after\/"},"modified":"2017-04-03T09:53:59","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T09:53:59","slug":"helen-zille-faces-disciplinary-action-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/helen-zille-faces-disciplinary-action-after\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Zille faces disciplinary action after colonialism tweets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africa&#8217;s opposition party has launched disciplinary action against its former leader after she tweeted colonialism was not all bad.}<\/p>\n<p>The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been under pressure to sanction Helen Zille since she caused a storm of controversy with the tweets in March.<\/p>\n<p>It is feared it may have scuppered the party&#8217;s electoral chances.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, the DA announced the anti-Apartheid activist stood accused of bringing the party into disrepute.<\/p>\n<p>DA leader Mmusi Maimane, who took over from Ms Zille in 2015, said it was not &#8220;an easy decision to take&#8221;, but that he felt the social media posts had undermined the DA&#8217;s project, to build a &#8220;a non-racial, prosperous democracy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The DA won 22% of the vote in 2014&#8217;s general election, coming second to the ruling ANC, and is hoping to build on the success of local elections in 2016 in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Zille &#8211; who is to continue in her role as Western Cape premier for the time being &#8211; could now be facing expulsion from the party for the tweets, which one caller to a local radio station said were &#8220;a bit like saying the holocaust was bad but Hitler&#8217;s engineers were great&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Other options include a fine or community service.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr Maimane &#8211; whose mission is to make the party historically seen as dominated by whites, more attractive to the black majority &#8211; warned it would &#8220;be incorrect to draw conclusions to say that she&#8217;s racist&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s not the person I know,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-19047 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_95425903_e3b9baf5-ff6d-4826-8aba-7d26e36b451f_1_.jpg\" alt=\"Helen Zille is in trouble following a series of tweets\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:BBC <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africa&#8217;s opposition party has launched disciplinary action against its former leader after she tweeted colonialism was not all bad.} The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been under pressure to sanction Helen Zille since she caused a storm of controversy with the tweets in March. It is feared it may have scuppered the party&#8217;s electoral chances. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-33636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33636"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=33636"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=33636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}