Newly-appointed housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela was met by cries of "voetsek" (go away) when he came to the front steps of the provincial administration building in central Cape Town to accept the document.

"Your message is loud and clear," MK Veterans Association chairperson Kebby Maphatsoe told the several hundred vets, most in camouflage outfits, who marched on Zille's office.

"They have sent over one of their puppets. We are not going to hand over the memo to her boyfriend."

MK veterans march against Zille

He was referring to a claim by the ANC Youth League that Zille was sleeping with members of her all-male cabinet.

The vets were marching ostensibly to demand that Zille apologise for saying President Jacob Zuma put his wives at risk when he had casual, unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman.

Madikizela, the only black person in the cabinet, came to get the memo after the protesters earlier rejected an official from Zille's office and demanded "a politician".

Zille herself is in Pretoria attending an extended lekgotla of the national Cabinet.

After Madikizela left, accompanied by jeers, Maphatsoe declared that the vets would not hand the memo to anyone other than Zille herself, and would come back another day to do so.

The memo, which he read out, accused Zille of continuing disrespect for and undermining of Zuma.

"Her attack on President Zuma is an attack on all Africans.... The president's private life is his private life, just as Zille is entitled to a private life of her own," he said, reading from the document.

Zille was trying to impose "white cultural values" that she regarded as superior to African values.

"Should Zille not immediately cease the racist tendencies that bring pain to all military veterans of South Africa, Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association will not hesitate to implement a militant programme of action to take back the streets and our communities," Maphatsoe said.

He said the Western Cape, which the DA won control of in the recent general election, would never be an island separate from the rest of South Africa.

"They might have won the battle, but they have not won the war. So we are going to continue in making sure that she does not govern properly until the elections they come after five years."

Maphatsoe said the veterans also demanded that Zille stop "purging" officials in the provincial administration, and that she co-operate with national government in ensuring service delivery for the poor.

Addressing the protest earlier, Cosas national president Wesley Kgang, wearing a MKMVA t-shirt, told the marchers there was "a suspicion" that Zille was a lesbian, and that she was possibly not even South African, but from Holland.

Zille is in fact of German extraction.

Western Cape chairperson of the African National Congress Mcebisi Skwatsha said the DA believed the province was a country within a country.

"The province of the Western Cape undermines what is happening in our country," he said.

Police kept a close watch on the march, which was contained by a cordon of yellow-bibbed marshals.