Helen Zille infuriates Twitter after defending colonialism

Helen Zille

Helen Zille may have been on Twitter for a while, but she still hasn’t acquired the skill of knowing when to put the phone down and go back to bed.

On Thursday morning, the Premier of the Western Cape took to Twitter to let everyone know that not everything about colonialism was bad.

Zille has been in politics a long time. She surely understands the dangers of professing that west is best. She could also do a quick Google search and note that colonialism is defined as “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically”. It is not the same as globalisation, and the sharing of knowledge for a better global society.

As other Twitter users were quick to point out: Europeans could have easily introduced their knowledge of these sectors without stealing land and killing South Africans.

Others pointed out that her actions were doing nothing but sabotaging her own party.

After half an hour of backlash, Zille took a step away from the criticism — but she promised to be back in a Trump-like manner to block all those who called out her ideologies.

Zille — who is not a stranger to Twitter’s ire — has since apologised for what “may have come across as a defence of colonialism.”

It was.

Featured image: The Democratic Alliance via Flickr (CC 2.0, resized)

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