EFF statement on Mantashe and Western influenced regime change 

11 May, 2015

The EFF rejects Gwede Mantashe’s claims of regime change influenced by the Western powers as yet another sign that ANC is planing to resist going out of power. Addressing the media after a meeting of former liberation movements in Zimbabwe, Mantashe claims that the Western powers are targeting South Africa because the regime is inconvenient to them. He went further to use the Zimbabwean example of ZANU-PF and MDC, arguing that MDC was a tool of the West to remove the former liberation movement, ZANU-PF.

As a point of departure, Mantahse must be told that whilst the ANC and ZANU-PF share common history in that they are both liberation movements, they also differ in significant ways. To mention only two, the ANC, unlike ZANU-PF never liberated the country through a guerrilla war, or even conventional war. The South African struggle was won not because of the strength of liberation movement armed forces, but the resilient protest activities of unarmed youth and workers’ movements. It is the death and sacrifice of these unarmed protesting masses that would mobilise the international community towards full international isolation of South Africa.

This is critical because it essentially means the people, and not the ANC, liberated South Africa. The South African people never waited for liberation armies to come and save them from the murderous apartheid regime. Above all, the liberation armies never came, never conducted any war inside the country, except in missions that relied on the very protest ability of our people.

The second significant difference that Mantashe must know of is that the ZANU-PF government, unlike the ANC government, expropriated land from white people. This is the pragmatic basis upon which many revolutionaries, now and then, believed in the claim that MDC was being used by Western forces to remove the ZANU-PF government. Regardless of all its weaknesses, ZANU-PF became the target of the West because of its refusal to concede on the land question.

Manstashe says the sign for the West’s influence on regime change in South Africa is the demand to strengthen institutions of democracy. This demonstrates ideological bankruptcy of the worst form, because in the first place, the reason why institutions of democracy are weak is due to Manstashe's ANC. It is the ANC government that undermines the courts and the Public Protector. There is nothing inconveniencing whatsoever, to the Western superpowers about the ANC because since 1994, the ANC has done nothing to affect the privilege and interest of the West in South Africa.

The only leadership that could ever have grounds to make such claims about the West is the leadership of President Thabo Mbeki. This is because, the leadership of President Mbeki is the one that was an inconvenience to the British Tony Blair led administration, supported by George Bush of the USA in relation to the South African foreign policy position on Zimbabwe. The South African government refused, at this time, to be used to remove ZANU-PF after it its government had expropriated land from white people. 

This is despite the fact that in all other respects, in South Africa, white privilege remained protected by the successive macroeconomic policies of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.

The statements of Manstashe must be rejected as a reflection of political paranoia in light of the fact that the ANC is going to loose power. They signify a party that is afraid of loosing power, which is now seeking to mobilise support on the continent under the pretext that it is the West, and not the genuine demands of the people that are looking for regime change. 

The ANC government has been protecting the interests of the West for the past 22 years in the country. In 2012, the ANC leadership under Zuma and Mantashe went to the extant of massacring black workers in Marikana, in protection of the interests of a London Mine. In addition, it is this very leadership of Zuma and Mantashe that helped the West to kill Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

We call on the people of the continent to reject Mantashe and the ANC because they do not represent the revolutionary interests of the people. They are the greatest stumbling block to the realisation of the African Revolution and they must be removed from power, through whatever revolutionary means possible.

Issued by Mbuyiseni Quintin Ndlozi, National Spokesperson, EFF, 11 May 2016