Cape Town - With just six weeks to go before South Africans cast their votes in the May 8 national elections, EFF leader Julius Malema has uttered a war cry, declaring the party will achieve an outright win in the Western Cape.
Malema was speaking after the Western Cape launch of the party’s manifesto at the Philippi Stadium near Samora Machel on Saturday, where he also decried any notions of a coalition government in order to secure control of the DA-led province.
Malema’s words came as DA premier candidate Alan Winde said his party was working hard to ward off an ANC and EFF coalition as a means to wrest power from the DA.
The EFF is one of three opposition parties in the provincial legislature and, like the African Christian Democratic Party, holds one seat while the ANC remains the main opposition.
On Saturday afternoon Malema arrived in Philippi to address thousands of supporters who had waited for him since the morning while he addressed another rally in the Eastern Cape.
Malema told supporters the EFF would not tolerate lazy members and urged them to continue campaigning, even at the houses of ANC members.
“Fighters, don’t be lazy in the Western Cape. Go house by house, whether they are wearing ANC T-shirts, talk to them and even in Gugulethu we go to the family homes of Tony Yengeni, Mcebisi Skwatsha and Zizi Kodwa.
“In the EFF we don’t want cowards, we don’t want lazy bastards. We want hard-working soldiers who will occupy the streets of South Africa.”
He urged supporters to vote in the upcoming elections in a bid to secure their futures.
“Young people, don’t drink the day before elections, you must wake up sober and go and vote and when you are done you must go and collect everyone, tell them to go and vote because the future belongs to the youth.
“If you don’t vote your future will be a future of unemployment and homelessness,” he said.
“We are a government that loves black people, a government that is for black people and not one that will perpetuate the pain and suffering of black people. We will end your pain,” he said.
“Black people have suffered for too long, they need a party that will take care of them. It’s like we are a cursed nation, black genocide is committed, we are being killed and accused of stealing.
“They kill us and say they mistake us for monkeys, for pigs and everywhere they see a black face they shoot it with ease.
“That does not mean we hate other people - we are in love with black people and we can’t cheat on black people with white people. We are not for any other thing, we are in marriage with black people and we are loyal to this marriage.”
The Human Rights Commission ruled this week on complaints of hate speech against Malema because of comments on white and Indian people.
Asked how he viewed the ruling, Malema said: “I only tell the truth, I don’t talk hate.”
The party’s provincial chairperson, Melikhaya Xego said it planned to take over the province by rallying the youth.
“The plan is to capitalise on the mistakes of the DA. They have serious divisions, especially those perpetuated by racial exclusion, in particular now that they have pushed the coloured leadership out, bringing in the likes of Bonginkosi Madikizela thinking that they would able to win in the African townships but we are closing ranks, we want each one of those townships to belong to EFF,” he said.
“Our election strategy is to reach out to everyone; we have capitalised on voter registration and increased voter support, especially the youth. We have targeted the institutions of higher learning, we have seen to it that youth in the Western Cape find a home in the EFF.
“We have taken over SRC leadership at UCT and CPUT with the simple plan of our response to all the challenges that the students faced that were not addressed by Sasco (SA Students Congress) and Pasma (Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania) and we capitalised on this.”
Xego said the party would not be presenting a premier candidate to compete with those already put forward by other parties.
“In terms of our own manifesto, we want to do away with provinces, we want two spheres of governance, national and direct, and to do away with the red tape, so we have done away with premier candidates.”