EFF lays charges against DA, ANC

Cape Town. 020414. EFF supporters protesting outside the Cape Town High Court afyter laying charges againts Jacob Zuman and Helen Zille for gross human rights violations. Picture Jason Boud.

Cape Town. 020414. EFF supporters protesting outside the Cape Town High Court afyter laying charges againts Jacob Zuman and Helen Zille for gross human rights violations. Picture Jason Boud.

Published May 3, 2014

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Cape Town - The EFF will nationalise the ocean to ensure South Africans benefit from the country’s natural resources, the fledgling party’s Western Cape premier candidate said on Friday.

 

“We need to end the limited access people have to natural resources,” Nazier Paulsen told the Cape Town Press Club.

“We will nationalise the ocean, the abalone,” he said, adding that it was unconscionable that the national government awarded fishing quotas to international companies instead of poor local communities.

Paulsen, a 47-year-old lecturer, said the EFF’s aims included total gender parity, free education up to post-graduate level, minimum farmworkers’ wages of R5 000 a month, and creating a provincial construction company that would provide 100 000 jobs.

The company would be set up to end the corruption-prone practice of contracting private builders to construct social housing, and would “end the spatial divide” that persisted 20 years after the advent of democracy.

 

The company would also take charge of the delivery of electricity, water, and sanitation. “We will end this potty system within a year.”

Paulsen was equally scathing of the DA and the ANC, from which he said he was an early defector.

Referring to DA leader Helen Zille as “the madam”, he said her provincial executive had not only failed to create “a single job” but was unable to understand the plight of women because it consisted of 10 men.

By contrast, he said, EFF leader Julius Malema had included women on his “war committee”.

Earlier on Friday, the EFF filed court papers in the Equality Court against Zille and president Jacob Zuma, accusing them of “gross human rights violations” and racism.

Both parties have laughed off the accusations.

 

The EFF said the provincial and national governments had failed people in the Western Cape, particularly black women.

The party further accused Zille and Zuma of violating the terms of the constitution.

 

Paulsen said the process to lodge the complaint was started last week, and that they would now await the court’s response.

DA provincial leader Ivan Meyer said his party would not take the charges seriously.

“We are working hard to make life better for everyone in the places where we govern. In the Western Cape, where we govern, unemployment is lowest, access to water, sanitation and electricity is best. We have spent hundreds of millions on better health and sanitation in poor areas,” he said.

 

ANC spokesman Keith Khoza referred to the charges as a joke, saying the EFF was not educated in the dynamics of the history of South Africa.

“It is a lack of understanding of the country’s history, because what is happening in the Western Cape is a result of what happened during apartheid, and President Zuma cannot be blamed for that… Africa is still reeling from the effects of colonialism.”

He did not think any court would take the EFF seriously.

The EFF said the DA and ANC would have 10 working days to respond.

Weekend Argus

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