Johannesburg - South Africa is a failed State heading for a leftist revolution, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema said on Tuesday.
Malema told a breakfast meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce, the State was incapable of direct service delivery so it relied heavily on tender procurement, which made corrupt politicians rich.
“There is no state capacity in South Africa, we are a failed state. We outsource everything through the tender system, including simple things like toilet paper,” Malema told guests at the gathering in Johannesburg.
“Take potholes for example. It takes 9 months to fix a pothole in this country. Why? Because government first puts it on tender, brings in business and then, a politician goes through the back door and gets a chunk of the outsourced work. Of course there are things we must outsource, but there are things that the state should do itself…be capacitated”.
Turning to ruling African National Congress (ANC), Malema said history had shown that liberation movements were now confronted with a a new political generation seeking change.
‘Irrelevant’
“History has shown us that a liberation movement that is in power for over 30 years, soon becomes irrelevant. The liberators, upon clinching power, enjoy the presidential palaces and all the benefits, they do not know anything about the economy and forget about the poor masses.
“In that 30 years, a new generation emerges, which does not bow to the political rhetoric… no… they have their own challenges, so they form a political party and remove the liberators from power”.
Even if the EFF did not exist, a leftist party would have emerged, he addded.
“Thirty years of ANC existence in power would have necessitated a new movement anyway. Take Zimbabwe for example, [opposition leader] Morgan Tsvangirai won the [2002] elections, he truly defeated [president] Robert Mugabe, because there was a new movement by him which did not care about the war of liberation,” he said.
“It was going to happen. It almost happened in Mozambique, it will happen in South Africa. Liberation movements suppress new political movements, but I tell you a revolution will happen here”.
The EFF, formed in 2013, came to the fore because of there was a political vacuum in South Africa. Leftist organisations such as the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) had all been swallowed by the state, he said.
“These organisations abandoned the working class. There was a vacuum in our politics, and nature doesn’t not allow a vacuum.”
The country was going to explode through a people’s revolution, Malema said. The pattern had started at the country’s universities through recent students protests.
“This country will explode one day because we are living a lie, we need to fix this main issue of ownership, which is mainly the land. The masses, who are poor, are suffering, while systems benefits the elite and the politicians. The year 1976 [when student protested against being taught n Afrikaans] started like this, with pockets of demonstrations which then exploded”.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY