EFF statement on xenophobic attacks, femicide and neoliberal macroeconomic policy

5 September 2019

FEMECIDE AND CHILD ABUSE

Fellow South Africans, we want to begin our statement today by expressing our sincere and heartfelt condolences on the brutal murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana, Leighandre "Baby Lee" Jegels, Janika Mallo, Ayakha Jiyani and her siblings.

In a single week, the country has witnessed kidnapping, rape and murder of women and children by men. Our boxing champion, Leighandre Jegels, was shot dead by her SAPS boyfriend, who also left her mother fighting for her life. Janika Mallo was gang raped, killed and her body dumped at the backyard of her grandmother's house. Uyinene Mrwetyana, a UCT student, took a walk to the Post Office, only to be captured by a 42-year-old male, raped, killed and buried her in his backyard. More recently, a father hanged dead his four children, Ayakha Jiyani and her three siblings.

The reality is that these are not unique cases, but a reflection of the daily experiences of women and children who face the threat of rape, abuse and death in both private and public spaces. The solution to these problems must lie in fixing our public institutions of law enforcement; the police stations, prosecutors and judges who care. Perpetrators of sexual crimes in our country know that women never get any help from the system and thus they perpetrate their crimes on them with impunity.

Our criminal justice system is most toothless when it comes to dealing with rape, detecting psychopaths and unearthing violent domestic spaces. The power of the law must precisely be so effective that it is observed by all in public and domestic spaces because they know there are consequences. It is therefore the police and the criminal justice system that must take full responsibility for why rape and murder of women and children has become part of our daily lives.

We call on a national emergency on police stations to be radically and urgently reconfigured as safe spaces for the report of sexual crimes. We call on investigative capacity to be immediately developed to detect sexual violence in domestic and private spaces. When efficient police exist, who acts with seriousness on reports of sexual violence and child abuse, there will be no one who will defy our laws, in any capacity and in any space.

We have assembled a legal team to take legal action on the Post Office and the Minister of Communications. This is because the safety of those who are serviced by the Post Office is the responsibility of the Post Office and the Minister of Communications. The killer of Nene was an employee of the Post Office and it is alleged that he had a criminal record and a history of murder. A responsible govemment and employer should have known this. By employing a person with a criminal record, the minister and the government were assuming the risk of such an incident happening against any member of the public.

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi will be leading this team and contact will be made with the family of Nene soon after the funeral.

XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS

The levels of poverty in South Africa, the rise of unemployment and general hunger has left our people fighting for limited resources. This has given space to agent provocateurs to led looting of small businesses and malls in cities and townships.

This has also been worsened by the misguided program by government targeting the raids of countrified goods amongst black people. If the raiding was genuine, how is it that Sandton Malls were not raided by the SAPS.

We call on our fellow South Africans to stop the violence against other poor people in our communities. Xenophobic violence will never resolve the problems our country face because they were never caused by foreign nationals in the first place. Unemployment, poverty, lack of service delivery and high levels of crime are all created by the ANC govemment and its bosses in the White Monopoly Capital quarters.

To kill another poor person with the hope that it will resolve your own poverty is a sign of self-hate, and that we live a lie. It is impossible for a poor person to be the cause of the poverty of another poor person. The battle must be taken to the real people who control our lives; the ANC government and big business that have failed to make our economy grow, create jobs, defeat poverty and unemployment.

Africa's problems will never be resolved by disunity. Only a united Africa can resolve the problems that have troubled the continent for centuries. We therefore make no apology when we call for African Unity, in particular renouncing the colonially imposed boarders.

NEOLIBERAL MARCO-ECONOMIC POLICY

The EFF has noted the Tito Mboweni, now ANC internal discussion document on the Economy as a direct declaration of war against the working class and black people in general. After the ANC conference was openly bought by White Monopoly Capital, we do not take it for granted that their policy direction is going to be dictated from imperialist Euro-American academy like Harvard University.

Mboweni's document seeks the privatisation of key assets of the state like Eskom, Transnet and Water. It also plans to keep the banking sector outside the control of the state. It is a fact that with privatisation always comes job losses, casualisation and outsourcing. We are back to the days of the introduction of GEAR that saw state companies being privatised, including the shutdown of universities.

We call on the Left in South Africa, from the independent trade union movement to political formations inside and outside legislatures to unite for the coming ANC war against the working class. The EFF will invest all its efforts to find a common platform for the Left to emerge with a common program and speak in one voice. If a unity has been forged against Zuptas over a broad-church platform, unity can and must be forged against the coming neoliberal war by the ANC.

Issued by Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, National Spokesperson, EFF, 5 September 2019