Helen Zille
.jpg)
Otta Helene Maree, known as Helen Zille, is a South African politician. She has served as the Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance since 20 October 2019. From 2009 until 2019, she was the Premier of the Western Cape province for two five-year terms, and a member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. She served as Federal Leader of the Democratic Alliance from 2007 to 2015 and as Mayor of Cape Town from 2006 to 2009.
Quotes
[edit]- It was an unusual background and I often felt a cultural clash between my school and home environments.
- It was interesting to note that every time events in our history offered people a choice between race or class solidarity, race seemed to win. Marxists were ingenious at explaining this away, but it was all rather tortuous. Marxists have to squeeze facts into their framework, to prove the historical inevitability of the working class revolution and the demise of capitalism.
- Today this kind of analysis is entirely obsolete, but at the time it was taken as self-evident by many activists. This kind of ideology does not respect alternative views or allow an open society.
- well-staffed schools would lose teachers and under-staffed schools would gain teachers. I supported this objective, as well as the original strategy to achieve it, which would have enabled well-staffed schools to determine which posts to lose on the basis of educational criteria.
- Liberals make space for people with opposing views. I believe in the falsification principle — one must always look for reasons why one may be wrong rather.
- I must tell you that the attitude of the staff, which had been one of anger initially, changed quite fundamentally after this incident. I think what changed the dynamic was that I had experienced some of their daily reality, and the conditions under which they work.
- The challenge of transformation is to improve quality. Time management is essential but we also have to measure our performance against benchmarks. For instance we need to know how many days are spent teaching and how well learners are doing.
- Education takes the most extraordinary amount of discipline, effort and hard work. Reward is always related to this. Time management, beginning with arriving on time for lessons, is essential, but it is a very hard thing to learn.
