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Johannesburg - DA leader Mmusi Maimane has hit back at insults flung at him by President Jacob Zuma, saying that he had the ability to "sting like a bee".
Addressing a group of people gathered on an open piece of ground near Soweto’s Chiawelo Clinic on Friday morning, Maimane said Zuma might be calling him a feather, but, borrowing loosely from boxing legend Muhammad Ali, Maimane said: "We bounce like a feather and we will sting him like a bee".
Maimane attacked Zuma, saying corruption was being permitted in the African National Congress because Zuma permitted it.
He also slammed the ANC leader for his racially slanted statements, in which he labelled the Democratic Alliance as a white party.
"You know when people are going backward, they start to divide us, saying white people this side and black people that side. We know our future, and it is in the DA."
‘Ambush zone’
Zuma, at a rally on Thursday, said the DA could not decide whether it wanted to be a black or a white party.
Maimane also said he preferred to move the country forward with love, rather than with hatred and violence.
"Some parties want to settle scores from the past," he said.
DA federal chairperson Athol Trollip, who is also the party’s mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay, said it was significant that the DA could now gather in a space that was enclosed by a fence.
"The DA would previously not have met in an enclosed zone because it would have been an ambush zone," he said.
Trollip added that the DA would win because the ANC was not the party it used to be.
The campaigning has come ahead of the party’s final elections rally, set to take place in Dobsonville, Soweto, on Saturday.
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