NEWS & ANALYSIS

Black caucus to split from DA - Godrich Gardee

EFF GS says Dali Mpofu helping De Lille navigate through racist victimisation

DA dismisses EFF claims that a splinter party will be announced soon

The DA says the EFF is trying to drive a wedge between the party's membership following comments made by its general secretary Godrich Gardee on Thursday.

Gardee said the DA would soon announce a splinter party as its black caucus distances itself from the troubled party.

Speaking at a picket outside the Moroccan embassy in Pretoria, Gardee said black members of the DA would soon announce a breakaway party and that EFF chairperson Dali Mpofu was in Cape Town helping embattled former City of Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille.

"The DA is [having] problems. Very soon there will be an announcement of the splinter of the black caucus group of the DA," said Gardee.

"The national chairperson had to rush to Cape Town to meet with [former] mayor Patricia de Lille to help her navigate through the racism and racist victimisation of Mayor de Lille in the Cape metro under the DA government."

The DA has dismissed Gardee's claims.

'We will never sellout our people'

"The DA is a very united party and will go into the 2019 elections even more united. The EFF is merely trying to create a wedge within the organisation but they will not succeed," said DA spokesperson Refiloe Ntsekhe.

She suggested that the EFF was hoping the DA's black members would join the red berets.

"The DA encourages robust debates within the organisation and members might not always agree on how to handle particular issues but the difference is that they get to be heard," Ntsekhe said.

Gardee also rubbished rumours of the EFF joining the ANC, saying the ANC was no more.

"We will never sellout our people in the EFF.

"The ANC is in a grave of Qunu. No one must confuse you that we are going back. We will speak to the ANC and try to convince them to disband and come to the EFF."

ANC 'useless'

He also spoke about the 2016 municipal elections, saying that the EFF had meetings with the DA in the mornings and the ANC in the afternoons.

Gardee explained that the EFF put forward several conditions that the ANC had to meet in order for it to keep the metros. These conditions included land expropriation without compensation and free education.

"They (the ANC) are so useless that they decided to ignore our demands and lose the metros. A year later [they] go to [the national conference in] Nasrec and resolve on all of our demands to them," Gardee said.

"We said to them; demand number one, issue a press statement that 'we as the ANC national executive committee, we agree that there should be land expropriation without compensation'.

"Well, they came back and said 'we presented that demand to the NWC (national working committee), they said never. It's not going to happen that thing. You can give to the DA those metros'."

Gardee claims that, after the Nasrec conference in December, the ANC approached the EFF to help them reclaim the metros, but the EFF said it was too late.

The EFF picket was in solidarity with Western Sahara, which the EFF says is being oppressed by the Moroccan government.

"We have come here today (Thursday) to express our outrage that a fellow African country can be a coloniser of another African country.

"Here next to us we have a beast and a monster who believes you must not be a neighbour, they do not believe in anything peaceful with their neighbours.

"We must treat the Moroccan government as nothing but an apartheid state. We must treat the Moroccan government as nothing but a state no different to the state of Israel. We must treat the state of Morocco as nothing but a bunch of [colonialists] and people who believe in holding others ransom and ruling over them against their own will."

Gardee said when the EFF becomes the ruling parting in 2019 it will close the Moroccan embassy in South Africa.

"South Africa is a land of peace. That is why we even stay with the whites, we do not intend to send them to the sea. But this one, they must go back to Morocco (sic)."

News24