Helen Zille is the chair of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance – the second largest party which is now serving in the ANC led government.
She is probably the most powerful woman in the country, because she remains enormously influential in the DA and the coalition government by extension.
Zille has been praised for building up a credible and liberal opposition party to the ANC over many years, which has now paid off by going into government and preventing the ANC from working with extreme and radical forces.
She has also been criticised for consistently and repeatedly making comments which have been described as racist, transphobic, bigoted and which have been criticised for minimizing the damage of colonialism.
In this interview the FT catches up with Helen Zille, introduces a bit more of her biography including her upbringing as a child of European Jewish refugees, and her early career before politics.
It closes with a description of a point she has been making for several years now: the ANC must collapse and will collapse – and when it does the DA will be there to absorb the bulk of the ANC remnant into a new, centrist and liberal majority free of corruption.
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Helen Zille is the chair of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance – the second largest party which is now serving in the ANC led government.
She is probably the most powerful woman in the country, because she remains enormously influential in the DA and the coalition government by extension.
Zille has been praised for building up a credible and liberal opposition party to the ANC over many years, which has now paid off by going into government and preventing the ANC from working with extreme and radical forces.
She has also been criticised for consistently and repeatedly making comments which have been described as racist, transphobic, bigoted and which have been criticised for minimizing the damage of colonialism.
In this interview the FT catches up with Helen Zille, introduces a bit more of her biography including her upbringing as a child of European Jewish refugees, and her early career before politics.
It closes with a description of a point she has been making for several years now: the ANC must collapse and will collapse – and when it does the DA will be there to absorb the bulk of the ANC remnant into a new, centrist and liberal majority free of corruption.