EFF marks the 6th of April as the arrival of white settlers who stole the land of African people
6 April 2021
The EFF marks the 6th of April as the day the original sin was set in motion against African people, when racist white-settler minority arrived on our shores and committed the most despicable crime against humanity.
On this day in 1652, Jan Van Riebeek and his band of criminals landed at what was known as the Cape of Good Hope, and pursued the racist and capitalist agenda of colonial conquest and subjugation of Black people in the land of their birth.
It is a day that inflicts pain in the souls of African people in the past and the present, as our very reality today is determined by that fateful arrival of a genocidal people who have no regard for the life of African people.
It is because of this very day, that a white minority has engineered a country that serves them alone. Today, because of the legacy of colonialism black people live in shacks, are servants in suburbs and are helplessly at the mercy of white people in the corporate sector and in all aspects of society.
The confidence and arrogance of racists in this country draws its inspiration from those settlers who assumed their own superiority, and the self-proclaimed sophistication of their norms, cultures, religions and values.
We are yet to escape the firm grip on African lives that was crafted during the epoch of settler colonialism
As a country, we still belong to a Common Wealth of nations that observes loyalty to the United Kingdom, the very purpose that the so-called former liberation movement known as the South African Natives National Congress was established for.
We continue to export valuable raw materials to the West, perpetuating our own underdevelopment and dependency through unequal trade relations whose purpose is wealth extraction in Africa.
The most offensive concession made by a government that suffers from a severe inferiority complex is the celebration of the very murderers who stole our land through statues, street names and symbols all over this country. Racist men and women, who committed atrocities against our people are made to represent heritage, and look over African people, reaffirming that black life means nothing.
Not even in Germany are the victims of the fascist Adolf Hitler subjected to statues and songs that commemorate the Nazi's, yet in South Africa we glorify those who committed an institutional cultural and physical genocide against African people.
Our national anthem contains the hymn of conquest known as "Die Stem", which the children of Jan Van Riebeek sang while they tortured black people who dared to demand dignity and that the wealth of South Africa be controlled by the majority Black people.
The legacy of 1652 lives on and our continued landlessness is testament to that. The EFF therefore reaffirms that we will never retreat in the agenda of the return of our land as the point of departure to reclaim black dignity and reverse the social-ills that are born out of the miserable day when a curse arrived at the shores of Africa.
The removal of all statues of racists and colonialist is an agenda that must be intensified, as killers have no right to be celebrated and the notion that racists must remain at sites of significance as heritage must be rubbished with the contempt it deserves.
We call for "Die Stem" to be removed from the national anthem, and for all Africans to respect the hymn Nkosi Sikelela i'Africa. by refusing to sing "Die Stem", and sitting down at any event of significance that attempts to defile a sacred song of our liberation heroes.
As African people, we must undermined the arrogant assumption that Black life, experience, culture and being is worth nothing, as 1652 is a day upon which whiteness imposed itself on Africans on the premise that it constitutes civility and that only white people are human beings.
We must fight tirelessly for Economic Freedom and for the dignity of Black people, so as to honour those who fought gallantly in defence of the land and the humanity of Africans.
The legacy of 1652 lives on. Our continued landlessness is testament to that.
— Economic Freedom Fighters (@EFFSouthAfrica) April 6, 2021
We will never retreat in the agenda of the return of our land as the point of departure to reclaim black dignity and reverse the social-ills born out of the day a curse arrived at the shores of Africa. pic.twitter.com/vNIQtXjlGm
Issued by Vuyani Pambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 6 April 2021
