Video by Ntombi Nkosi
Soweto - EFF leader Julius Malema said their destination today is that they want one million members by December and because they have made a promise to that membership, they dare not fail.
“If we dare fail, it means that we will not be breathing the same air with Hector Pieterson. We are here to reconnect with that spirit of committed young people who wanted freedom in their lifetime. We are not asking for your blood. We are asking for your dedication and determination,” Malema said.
Malema was addressing scores of EFF supporters who attended the party’s launch of its one million membership campaign at the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto on Friday.
The EFF says it is confident that by the end of 2022, they will have one million card carrying members.
EFF Gauteng provincial chairperson Itani Mukwevho said the mandate of the ground forces must be to make sure that there are active branches that sit weekly, and have a branch meeting which will be submitted to regional secretaries. They must have reports and a programme of action.
”My message is that we want all of us in this province to be united. We must lead with a purpose. We need each other to rebuild our own branches, especially here in Soweto. All of us must go out and make sure we protect the gains of the organisation. The bar must always go up,” said Mukwevho.
Malema asked ground forces to go to every street and make sure that at least every house has an EFF member because when they call for war one day, every street must respond.
“All of us, whether you are working or not, every Friday, you must wear red because every weekend, it's a day of recruiting members of the EFF. Go to work in your red,” said Malema.
Malema warned members not to go to clubs wearing EFF T-shirts.
He cautioned South Africans against chasing away foreigners, saying the very same countries where those foreigners come from helped the liberation struggle to fight for freedom.
“When you see a black person, you must immediately sympathise with them because we are hated as black people. Please, we cannot afford to hate blacks who are hated by everyone. We are not criminals. We have political education because we appreciate that the political liberation of South Africa started in the north. Those people fought for us to be where we are as a country,” Malema said.
He said if one is joining the EFF for the wrong reasons, then they must look somewhere else where it's yellow.
"Look for something that looks like yellow and join those things where people join to be members of other members," he said.
"Colonisation must collapse with everything that it came with. Our struggle is not a struggle of Soweto, it is a struggle of all over South Africa," Malema said.
Video: Ntombi Nkosi/ IOL Politics
He further said they want councillors that work for their people and not want to shine on their own. He mentioned that they will give R50 000 to councillors to uplift their communities on matters that affect them.
Malema said land is everything.
“You will never get jobs for as long as you don’t have the land because the jobs come with the land. The land comes with agriculture. It comes with the mines. It comes with the banks. It comes with the factories. It comes with the sea,” Malema said.
Political Bureau