afrol News, 3 May - The leader of the Democratic Alliance party in South Africa, Tony Leon, said it is an irony for South Africans to limp with 13 threats to freedom, especially at a time when their country celebrates its 13 years of democratic rule.

He argued that South Africans have much to celebrate on the country's 13th Freedom Day mainly because they are faced with the same number of real threats to “hard-won liberty”.

"It is a sad irony that after 13 years, there are 13 very real threats to our hard-won liberty, and we need to have a frank and honest discussion about them," the controversial politician told ‘DA@WORK’.

Mr Leon, who announced to step down from office soon, accused the South African government of continuously attempting to encroach the independence of the judiciary, overreach of the executive power, particularly from the Presidency, which had usurped decision-making from elected representatives.

He also dilated on the dangers of closing of spaces for civil society, encroachment on press and media freedom, lack of respect for democratic outcomes. Mr Leon cited the ruling “African National Congress’ attempts to unseat the DA-led Cape Town multiparty coalition as a warning that government cared about democracy as long as it was winning.”

The DA leader said most South Africans have been living with high crime rates.

He also pinned down the South African government on its foreign policy, which according to him, “had betrayed a legacy of negotiated democratic settlement by supporting or refusing to condemn a rogues' gallery of despotic regimes.

"We are becoming associated with the polecat-club of dictators shunned by most of the world."

Mr Leon said the ANC's determination to rewrite history to privilege its role above others - changing place names, airbrushing individual histories and generally falsifying history into one, triumphalist, majority-nationalist narrative- is threatening.

HIV/AIDS, worsening poverty, joblessness coupled with failures to implement growth-driven reforms lighting a power-keg of resentment among the poor.

"Far too many of our people stand resentfully outside the winners' enclosure, peering at a small, well-connected elite whose privilege drives home the majority's suffering."

Failure to deliver on promises, acquisition of better education and skill training also among the DA leader’s listed threats.

"It is the governing party's obsession with transformation, meaning political control by the ANC of all levers of power in society, as well as the relentless pursuit of demographic representivity at all costs."

By staff writer

© afrol News

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