EFF statement on plots to assassinate EFF Secretary General Marshall Dlamini
7 February 2023
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has received a briefing from the South African Police Service (SAPS) that senior leaders of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) are plotting to assassinate EFF Secretary General Marshall Dlamini.
The reliable intelligence reports illustrate that senior leaders of the IFP believe that our Secretary General is solely responsible for the collective decision we took to initiate and support motions of no confidence against IFP Mayors in several Municipalities in the Province of KwaZuIu Natal.
The EFF condemns with contempt the plots to assassinate our Secretary General or any leader for selfish and narrow political purposes. We do not take these reports lightly because the province of KwaZuIu Natal has been defined by many political assassinations for a very long time, a habit which the EFF has never been associated with and has condemned since our formation 10 years ago.
When IFP members recurrently, stubbornly and physically disrupted meetings of the EFF in different parts of KwaZuIu Natal in 2014, the leadership of the EFF organized a meeting with leadership of the IFP under its former President Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and agreed that violence cannot and should never be an instrument of political persuasion.
After the 2016 Local Government Elections, it is primarily the EFF that played a leading in role in ensuring that the IFP participates in the government of the City of Johannesburg. After the 2021 Local Government Elections, the EFF played a central role in voting against the ANC and establishing IFP led governments in several Municipalities in KwaZuIu Natal.
When we decided to actively participate in government, we convened cordial meetings with the leadership of the IFP and communicated our decision.
We respect the IFP's decision to not support the establishment of EFF governments in different Municipalities in KwaZulu Natal hence our logical and rational decision to vote out IFP governments wherever we previously voted for them.
The EFF is strongly opposed to the use of violence and assassinations as a method to settle political differences. We as the EFF will do everything in our power and within our capacity to protect our Secretary General against Agent Provocateurs and Agents of Apartheid who only thrive through violence or threats of violence.
The EFF remains a force to be reckoned with and has recorded one of its biggest and decisive successes and growth in KwaZulu-Natal and the whole of South Africa. No form of intimidations and threats will curtail our perpetual growth and prosperity as an economic emancipation movement.
We therefore call on South Africa's Law Enforcement Agencies to thoroughly investigate those who are behind the plot and arrest them with immediate effect. The SAPS must not care who is behind the assassination plots and must act decisively irrespective of the seniority of the plotters.
We call on the IFP, its leaders and members to desist from using of violence as a mechanism of settling political differences. South Africa is entering into an age where political parties will from time to time disagree on how governments are constituted at local, provincial and national levels and violence cannot and should not be used as a weapon for narrow and selfish political purposes.
We encourage all EFF Ground Forces, Regional, Provincial and National Leaders to never retreat nor surrender even at the point of provocation and threats. The fact that there are threats against our leaders is a demonstration that the EFF is a force to be reckoned with and one which will take over government through democratic, decisive and peaceful elections unless the space for democratic engagement is foreclosed.
Issued by Sinawo Thambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 7 December 2023
