THE EFF WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN RAMAPHOSA'S MEETING WITH POLITICAL PARTIES
Wednesday, 14 July 2021
The EFF will not participate in Cyril Ramaphosa non-productive meeting with political parties to rubber-stamp decisions already made. Ramaphosa meetings are a waste of time because he does not consider inputs by political parties and treat leaders of opposition parties like children. At the same time, he continues with white people's agenda. In past meetings, we met with Ramaphosa and agreed on matters. However, he continued and said the opposite of what we agreed as leaders of political parties.
Ramaphosa religiously listens to the DA and unapologetically read every word of their script. We warned Ramaphosa that he must not send soldiers to the street. The EFF called on Ramaphosa, together with his ministers, deputy ministers, premiers, members of the executive council and mayors, to go to communities experiencing riots to engage the people to restore order. Instead, he ignored our warning and deployed soldiers to communities, declaring war against civilians.
Ramaphosa went on national television and read the DA statement because he is comfortable with white people's agenda. Before his address on Monday, the DA released a statement to call for the deployment of the South African National Defense Force and a meeting by the Ramaphosa with all political parties to discuss the crisis. This is the script that Ramaphosa is working from, word for word, without changing anything to impress white people he addressed on Monday while our people continue to suffer.
The EFF is not going to attend useless meetings and rubber-stamp nonsense to solve ANC factional squabbles. Ramaphosa must deal with ANC factional battles and address his party members to stop burning the country, kill people and destroy livelihoods. Ramaphosa must stop calling factional squabbles "ethnic mobilization" address members of the party he leads to stop wreaking havoc.
For his cabinet ministers and so-called leaders of the ANC to wait for the soldiers to clear the crowds and pretend they are addressing the people is disingenuous and cowardly. Ministers choose safe sites clear by the soldiers instead of going to the hostile and epicenters of the havoc. Members of the ANC caused the mayhem and chaos we witnessed in our streets because of internal political instability Ramaphosa failed to address even when there was information of a possible outbreak of this nature.
We do not agree with the people who are looting and destroying livelihoods, livelihoods of black people. However, we also do not believe that they deserve to be shot at by soldiers when there can be a political solution to the chaos facing communities. Ramaphosa must go and address communities and lower structures of his party instead of organizing useless meetings. We call on Ramaphosa to withdraw the soldiers from our street with immediate effect, stop the war he has declared on the civilians, and find a political solution to a political problem.
Statement issued by Economic Freedom Fighters, 14 June 2021
