Durban - The controversial Mazibuye African Forum is refusing to take heed of mounting criticism over its anti-Indian rhetoric.
“Rather than tone down we will be mobilising Africans on the issues that we have raised. We want these issues to be discussed,” Zweli Sangweni, the forum’s leader, said yesterday.
The group is advocating for some Indian-owned land to be distributed to Africans and for Indians to lose their BEE status, among other things.
Sangweni said contrary to popular views, his group were not racists and denied ever saying that Indians should be chased away.
“We do not hate Indians, but we are saying that they benefited through colonialism and apartheid, therefore, they cannot continue to benefit from BEE. We do not regard them as Africans but… (as) Indians in the diaspora.”
He said some of the land owned by Indians belonged to Africans as it had been gained through colonialism.
The ANC’s national chairwoman, Baleka Mbete, and chairman in KwaZulu-Natal, Senzo Mchunu, became the latest at the weekend to strongly criticise the group.
Speaking in Ballito on Friday, Mbete said the sentiments raised by the group were against the constitution and the Freedom Charter, which stated that South African belonged to all who lived in it.
The ANC in KZN, which has met forum representatives, has also raised concerns about its statements, saying it believed they constituted hate speech, were “toxic” and amounted to a distortion of history.
Sangweni confirmed that, at the forum’s meetings with the ANC, the ruling party had raised concerns about Mazibuye’s stance.
But Sangweni said the group would keep exerting pressure to try to influence a policy shift that would see radical economic transformation in favour of Africans.
“As a pressure group, our (task) is to start a debate. We are saying the situation cannot continue like this. All the government tenders in this province go to Indians,” he said. “You cannot tell me of one sector that is dominated by Africans.”
The South African Minority Rights Equality Movement (Samrem) has dismissed the forum as a joke.
“In my view these people should not be taken seriously. If you think you are superior to other people just on the basis of your skin colour, then you are no different to the Ku Klux Klan or the AWB,” said Samrem convener, Ashin Singh.
He said the group’s arguments were not based on any facts, and questioned its statements that Indians owned the biggest chunk of land in the province.
“How many Indian farmers do you know? Most of the Indian farmers out there have smallholdings of one or two hectares, so what this forum is saying is pure nonsense,” Singh said. “It is these types of generalisations that we do not want.”
He said it was absurd to say Indians had it good at the expense of blacks because they were still disadvantaged by quotas imposed by universities and employers.
Singh said it was unfortunate that some of the statements made by Mazibuye had led to panic in some sectors.
Samrem had tried to meet Mazibuye, but Sangweni had not turned up for the meeting, he said.
Sangweni said his forum was not interested in meeting groups that represented Indians. “We get many of these invites and we just ignore them. We are not interested in talking to them,” he said. “To us these issues are non-negotiable.”
Mazibuye is planning a march for July 26, but Sangweni said the group was still waiting to get permission for this.
Daily News