Cape Town - Julius Malema has told farmworkers in Worcester they can be the “bosses” of the farm owners.
The Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) leader addressed workers and community members who packed a hall in Zwelethemba, outside the Boland town, on Sunday.
Malema promised that if the EFF was voted into power it would return land to Africans and nationalise the mines and sea for fishing.
“You can own a farm. You can produce wine, because it is you that produce it now. You can even sell that wine outside South Africa,” he said.
“It sounds like a dream but will happen. Why should you think you should be the one working and not the other way around and employ your boss of today. He can be your employee tomorrow.”
Malema had a blitz tour of the Western Cape this weekend.
He visited a fisher community in Hawston, Khoisan traditional leaders in Muizenberg and held a mass meeting in Khayelitsha on Saturday.
Malema said his party was speaking to the fishing and farming community about their problems before they drew up an election manifesto.
The EFF said it aimed to restore the dignity of farmworkers.
“Like today, there are still people who think white people are created by God to own farms and give you jobs. It is not like that,” Malema said. “That mindset must go away. You are your own boss. You must be the boss of everybody in this town.”
Malema said good education was the most important factor in ensuring the EFF’s revolution was sustainable.
“That (educated) child will get you from a shack to a mansion,” he shouted.
Malema warned against drugs, abuse of alcohol and xenophobia.
“Xenophobia is what white people like, rejoicing in blacks killing each other. Cape Town is full of foreigners, they are white but they are never beaten. But those are people who have taken your land, those are the people who have taken your economy but you never beat them. You beat fellow Africans,” he said.
Malema said he could understand why the DA had won the 2009 elections in the Western Cape.
“You are forgiven for voting for Helen Zille. It is because you did not have an alternative. But now you have one in us,” he said.
He told his audience that people should remember that “white people don’t vote for black people but you people voted for a white person”.
The EFF was seeking to win one million votes in the Western Cape, party officials claimed.
In 2009 the DA was the only party to win more than a million votes in the province.
Cape Times