Johannesburg - EFF leader Julius Malema has reiterated the party’s controversial call for the opening up of borders to foreign nationals coming from neighbouring countries.
Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday, Malema blasted the SA government for the massive human and traffic congestion at the country’s borders which escalated as immigrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other countries were being processed, screened or tested for Covid-19.
The party has been calling on the government to allow the immigrants to enter into the country, but SA has since closed the borders until next month as part of new regulations aimed at combating escalating infections.
In what could be read as a call for the immigrants to jump the border illegally, Malema called on foreign nationals to “find a creative” way to enter the country if borders were not opened for them.
“If the gates are not going to be open for SADC (Southern African Development Community), fellow SADC people please, find a creative way. This is your home. Your families are here. There is no way anyone is going to close you out here,” Malema said.
Malema said the closure of the Lesotho border was irrational as there was no fence between it and SA.
“Whether you close the border or not, the Lesotho people are going to come into SA and they are going to come through an unregulated process without being tested and without being processed because fools have closed the gate where there is no fence,” he said.
Malema accused the government of behaving in a manner “that pleases whiteness and Europeans”.
“The disease did not come through Zimbabwe or Lesotho. It came from Italy. It is white people who brought the disease here and we said to the government ‘quarantine these people and isolate them’. Because they were white, they did not isolate them,” Malema said.
The EFF has also indicated it would reject any move aimed at holding local government elections which are planned for later this year as the party says campaign time had been lost by political parties.
Malema said the party would push for the municipal elections to be now held in 2024 and be finally aligned with general elections.
“We should have started the campaign preparation from July 2020 but even internally we could not meet because of regulations and lockdown. That preparation has not taken place in all political parties,” Malema said.
Malema said this year it would also be impossible to embark on public election campaigns while the pandemic was still raging this year.
“For elections to be declared free and fair, among other things, they include having sufficient time to prepare and campaign openly,” he said.
He said campaigns would not be possible this year if people were still not vaccinated as this would lead to infections during door-to-door drives and other programmes due to human contact.
He took a swipe at Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, effectively accusing him of being a conspiracy theorist over his controversial views on vaccines.
Last month, Mogoeng controversially prayed against “any vaccine that is of the devil and that is meant to infuse 666 in the lives of people and meant to corrupt their DNA” and called on it to be destroyed by fire.
“We have given room to these conspiracy theories. Perhaps if we were producing our own vaccine we would not have some unfounded stories like 666 vaccines. Where have you ever had such madness?” he asked.
Political Bureau