DOCUMENTS

Let us teach the DA a lesson - Marius Fransman

ANC WCape leader says they are not satisfied with having stolen the land, but want to steal the legacy of Madiba too

Address by Marius Fransman, Provincial Chairperson ANC Western Cape & Deputy Minister of International Relations delivered at the Western Cape (SACP) Provincial Launch of Red October Month held in Wellington on Sunday October 13 2013

It gives me great pleasure to be here in your midst today to celebrate Red October month. We bring you fraternal greetings and on behalf of the ANC Western Cape, we wish you success and in particular, we salute the SACP and its revolutionary leadership for always keeping the flag of the working class masses flying high and fighting those who only advanced the interests of the privileged elite.

It is for this reason that the role of the SACP is so critical in our progressive Alliance and Red October month celebrates this long legacy of putting the interests, welfare and fundamental rights of the working class first!

We are now entering two decades of intense struggle in a post democratic South Africa to transform our society and to transform organs of state to serve the agenda of the National Democratic Revolution and to carry out the prerogatives to develop a national democratic society.

We have accomplished much in the face of great odds but there still remains much to do. Our record of accomplishments over the past 19 years speaks for itself:

  • We built 3.3 million houses - 600 every day;
  • Transferred more than 500 000 state rental houses to long-term occupants;
  • We brought electricity to 6.5 million new households taking the total number to 10 million;
  • We installed 500 000 solar geysers in poor working class households;
  • 6.5 million households now have access to water infrastructure - totalling 11.6 million households;
  • The same number have access to some free basic water;
  • 7 million households of those who cannot pay for their water get 6 000 litres free each month;
  • 11.5 million households have access to toilets - 84.3 present (that is an additional 6.5 million since 1994).

We want to say to you today, the ANC delivers and the ANC leads. We never claim that we have the panacea for all ills but our tradition is deep rooted in consulting with our people and taking the time out to listen to the elders, talk to community leaders, understanding what our people are saying and then together finding solutions that work.

There is a picture painted by the enemy that all is doom and gloom and twenty years of democracy has brought nothing but corruption, economic loss and social dysfunction. What is this doom and gloom that they are talking of? Have they not stolen enough? Have they not abused enough? Have they not lied enough? Have they not eaten enough of our flesh?

Today much of our economy still remains in the hands of a privileged mainly white few; as we commemorate 100 years of that archaic and oppressive law the 1913 Native Land Act most of our land is still locked in white ownership passed on from family to family; the best and most senior jobs in the private sector are still reserved for whites; access to high quality private healthcare and the top private schools are still beyond the reach of the average black working class family; despite our sectoral charters and amended BBBEE legislation much of industry remains either untransformed or under-transformed; and nowhere are these realities more stark than here in the Western Cape where the DA Government has reversed every area of transformation that we had made as an ANC government.

Is this the type of future we want to promise our children? Is this the type of society that we struggled for and for which many gave up their lives and for which others sacrificed sweat and tears? I therefore welcome the theme of Red October 2013: "Transform the financial sector to serve the people."
 
It is no coincidence that the financial services sector is one of the largest contributors if not the second largest after agriculture of the Western Cape economy. It is an economy that remains largely untransformed. This is an indictment on us as revolutionaries and it is an obstacle to advance the economic equality agenda.
 
The African National Congress, and its Alliance partners the SACP and COSATU are the mantle-bearers of the Freedom Charter that spells out clearly that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white."  
 
This statement is no simple statement just as the Freedom Charter in all its simplicity was and still is not a just another simple statement articulating hot air. It represents the voice of our people forged into unity through bitter struggle under the most repressive conditions.

I want you to understand and reflect on the nature of this Freedom Charter, the nature of our movement and why we as the leadership of the ANC in this province chose to call our strategy a "People's Path to Power".
 
The Freedom Charter was collated from a charter of minimum demands made by our people. Fifty thousand (50 000) volunteers spanned the length and breadth of this country covering small villages and dorpies like Wellington, Ashton and De Doorns - everywhere - people signed the petition in great numbers - demonstrating the mass character of our movement and that the vast majority of the people of this country love the ANC.

It is for this reason that I want to make a call on the people of Wellington, the Boland and the Western Cape as a whole. We call on all our supporters to ensure that they are registered to vote. In order to do so you must have a valid South African identity document. We call on you to demonstrate that the ANC is a mass based movement that enjoys the support of the mass of our people. Now is your chance to register next year we will call on you in 2014 to make a difference by casting your ballot and making your mark next to the ANC logo.

I wanted to bring it to your attention that under the guise of freedom of expression some white folk have taken to usurping the legacy of Red October month to tell the world that whites in South Africa are being subjugated to the worst form of oppression and genocide. Their protest march was widely covered in the media on Friday and they claim: "whites have suffered since apartheid ended and Afrikaners ceded power to Nelson Mandela's African National Congress party in 1994".

In 2004 they resorted to the same shenanigans shouting wolf while chomping on the juicy leg of roasted lamb. They spread rumours that whites would be massacred and coined all types of phrases for this operation - "Operation Vula", "Night of the long Knives", "Operation white clean up", "Operation Iron Eagle", "Operation Uhuru" and yes believe it or not: "Red October campaign".

In 2004 they spread all these lies and rumours and said Mandela's death was imminent and therefore whites would be massacred." 
 
In his wisdom Madiba quelled the rumours saying: "My health is all right, I'm doing very well. Others have said that I am on the eve of going to my grave. If that day comes, I will go and knock at the door of heaven"  
 
He joked that when his time comes, "I will look for a branch of the ANC in that world and join it."
 
Nicky Falkof writing in the Daily Maverick says: "In the case of Red October month, though, there are certain things about the campaign that merit a closer look: In her book 'Aftermath of Feminism' British Cultural theorist Angela Mc Robbie dissects the way Tony Blair's aggressively neo-liberal government co-opted the language of feminism in the late 1990's. Part of New Labour's establishment strategy, she argues, was to draw on a vocabulary familiar from feminist speech and writing, but to convert it into something much more individualistic, creating a sort of deluded substitute for feminism and other liberatory forms of thought, which pervades the media and popular culture as well as the state. Words like empowerment and choice, which once suggested radical notions like economic equality and reproductive freedom, have been chewed up and spat out to the extent that empowerment now means pole dancing and choice means dismantling the National Health Service."
 
We must crush the politics of deception and those who in its name lie, steal and usurp. They are not satisfied with having stolen the land. They now want to claim the mantle of liberation too. Is that not corruption? They are not content with owning all the land they also want to steal the legacy of Madiba. Is that not corruption? They are not content with owning the economy. They also want the right to abuse farmworkers, perpetuate the dop (tot) system, pay slave wages and financially enslave workers through debt, dop and donner. Is that not corruption and abuse? Enough is enough!

I call on the tannies, oompies (aunts, uncles); I call on the young and old wherever you find yourself and you are eligible to vote. Whether you are in the smallest little hamlet or village. In every informal settlement and township - wherever you are. Laat ons die DA ‘n les leer. (Let us teach the DA a lesson.) Go and get your ID and register to vote.
 
There is only one language that the DA understands and there is only one way to get the message through to them that we have had enough - we are gatvol (fed-up). We can and will win back the Western Cape. We have a historic responsibility and mission to win back this final bastion of neo-colonialism and white rule.
 
Our struggle to defeat the DA is rooted in our understanding that they are the advocates of the conservative right-wing neo-liberal agenda. They are hell-bent on spreading this cancer to other provinces and further into the African continent.
 
The ANC Western Cape and the working class masses have a historic responsibility to uproot this vile ideology and dump it in the dustbin of history. We call on our comrades in the Alliance and in particular the SACP as the champion of the working class masses to rally behind us in this task. We call on you to mobilize all your branches and members in the service of this cause. Let us defeat the DA here in the last bastion of white privilege. Let us defeat the DA here where colonialism, imperialism and Apartheid first took root in our country.
 
In defeating the DA in the Western Cape we defend the National Democratic Revolution elsewhere. For wherever we allow the DA space it will further the agenda of preserving and protecting white privilege, and spreading the neo-liberal right wing agenda in all its manifestations - social, spatial, racial, cultural, class and economic - neglecting the needs and aspiration of the working class masses.
 
They will prioritise service delivery to the mainly white privileged. They will allow farmers unfettered freedom to do as they please whether that be through slave wages, poor working conditions, hazardous or illegal working environment and lacking security of tenure - as long as the farmer gets top dollar for his wine and grapes - all is well in the eyes of the DA. 
 
They don't care how many more Flippies (Engelbrecht) suffer the indignity of being maimed and paralysed. They don't care how many more workers get beaten. All they care about is the profits that will fund their campaigns of lies, deceit and hypocrisy.

The true story of the DA is told where it is governing. Here in the Western Cape where it has declared class, cultural, religious, racial, spatial, environmental and economic war on the working class and poor through its policies and service delivery programs. The true story of the DA is that it is bringing back apartheid in this province.
 
We must say to the DA your days are numbered. In fact, it is just over 210 days for you to taste defeat at the hands of the farmworkers, the minstrels, the churches, the mosques, the schools and people all over the Western Cape who are tired and "gatvol" of your racist actions, inferior delivery, lies and deception.
 
All our people whom you promised houses and didn't deliver - diverting the money to the rich and historically white middle class areas... All our people on the Cape Flats from whom you stole the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) and gave it to the mainly white suburbs of Tableview, Blouberg and Milnerton who have two or three cars each in the driveway... All our people who don't have storm water drainage, pavements, decent toilets, lights and proper roads in Khayelitsha, Hangberg and Du Noon whilst you build bicycle lanes and speed bumps for Parklands, Rondebosch and Constantia... 
 
All our people across the Western Cape from Manenberg to Mfuleni, Khayelitsha to Khayamandi, Mitchells Plain to Mbekweni, where serious and violent crime has gone up because the DA has stopped funding their community based social crime prevention structures and projects, but rather gave money to new projects that legitimize and strengthen gang leaders in these areas... Whilst deploying most of the resources in the city to keep  the historically white areas from Bishop Courts to the Atlantic Sea Board safe and secure, as Bishop Lavis and Atlantis burns.

We say to you Phantsi DA, Phantsi - down with the DA down!

Amilcar Cabral said: "Tell no lies and claim no easy victories!" Let us go out and be assured of victory through hard-work and registering all our people to vote. 

I wish you well with all that you have planned for Red October Month and assure you of our continued support. The ANC Western Cape joins in saying: forward with Red October Month forward! Victory is in sight; let's push hard over the final lap.

I close with a quote once again paraphrased from a historic speech delivered on Red October day: "Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the DA?"

Issued by the ANC Western Cape, October 13 2013

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