The word Nasrec is synonymous with politics, in-fighting and party presidential elections.
In 2017, Nasrec was the hall of tears and smiles when President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign trumped Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s RET campaign, making him the ANC’s 13th president.
Now, the EFF is heading to Nasrec, a suburb of Johannesburg, to decide its future leadership.
Its president Julius Malema sat down with Independent Media to discuss the leadership battle and his war with Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan.
Malema opened the interview with lamentations about Ramaphosa.
“He has sold our country to the highest bidder. We are in a worse off state than we were five years ago. This idea that we are coming out of nine wasted years is nonsense.
“Ramaphosa was the deputy president when the ANC was in charge. It is because of Pravin and Cyril and their determination to remove all black people from strategic positions and replace them with their cabal and agents of white monopoly capital that we are even worse off now.”
Malema had initially backed Gordhan after Zuma fired him as finance minister. When asked why he changed his view, Malema responded: “Because he is an agent of white capital.”
“We wrote to him to ask him if he was in the US to raise funds for the CR17 campaign and if that trip was sponsored by Werksman. That is how Ramaphosa got the billion rand for his campaign, it was because of Pravin.”
Although rumours of deep divisions in the EFF have been circulating for months, it will be the first time the party is faced with such internal squabbles in the public domain.
Malema and Floyd Shivambu are the two senior leaders who are guaranteed to be returned to their positions. But no one is safe.