Let me start by saying that I actually like Helen Zille.
Over the years, I have had many interactions with her and she has always struck me as genuine.
Besides, any white, coloured or Indian South African who takes the time to learn an indigenous language and understand the cultures, has got my respect.
I also like the fact that she used to belong to my profession of journalism and that she was a key role player in breaking the story of Steve Biko’s torture and death.
So I think her heart is in the right place. But it’s not her heart I want to talk about, it’s her kop.
As you know by now, this weekend she was given a notice of suspension by the Democratic Alliance for allegedly having brought the party into disrepute with her Tweet saying colonialism was not all bad.
I don’t know whether she should be expelled or not. Her party has to make that decision.
But I am irritated by the perennial argument about how Jan van Riebeeck brought culture to the illiterate local savages.
It is, of course, true that the Europeans brought strange new clothing, tools, cutlery, medicine, English, Western engineering and a general new way of life.
But they also brought alcoholism, new diseases, discrimination, social deprivation and, worse of all, a system that academics are slowly starting to understand to be devastatingly destructive and downright evil, known as capitalism.
Europe’s expansion into deepest, darkest Africa was not to spread religion or humanity to the world.
It was to expand the reign of whichever royal happened to be in power at the time.
It was so they could have more land, more resources and more subjects, paying more taxes to the king.
In short, it was capitalism.
Locals weren’t just robbed of their few possessions, but of their very dignity and humanity.
We are only now seeing some of those stories being told, like the film Krotoa that’s being released later this year, about the young Khoisan girl who learned to speak Dutch and Portuguese and became Van Riebeeck’s chief business interpreter.
For all her natural intelligence she was soon no longer useful and died at the age of 31, an alcoholic banished to Robben Island and her half-breed children taken away from her.
Many people argue that locals willingly gave up their rights to land, or sold it for next to nothing at the time.
But in a socialist society where everyone owns and shares everything for the wellbeing of the entire community, there was really nothing to give up, but lots to steal.
To the indigenous people, it must have sounded ridiculous to own land that clearly belonged to everyone, so yes, they willingly gave it up, probably with a disbelieving snigger.
They must have rolled around laughing in their huts about the stupid white man who thinks that he can own the land and the rivers, the sky and the ocean.
So, in their minds, they weren’t giving up anything at all, but were instead gaining whatever the payment was.
But they were fooled into subscribing to a system that was deliberately hoodwinking them; a system that was designed to benefit only a very few people at the expense, humanity and dignity of everyone else.
I’m sure if they knew what we know now, if they understood the full scope of what they were being subjected to, they would have made very different decisions.
So when Zille says colonialism wasn’t all bad, she is speaking purely from a white European perspective, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to appreciate the impact it had had on the people on the receiving end of that settlement. And how that impact is still being felt by some today.
The only thing that colonialism brought us was to give white people a misplaced sense of superiority in the world, to place value on material possessions instead of community and to discriminate against each other based on who has more.
So, no Madame Premier, there is nothing of lasting value that colonialism brought the world, making it all bad, yes.