EFF REJECTS THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE INITIATIVE AS A REPETITION OF THE FAILED CODESA
05 May 2017
The EFF rejects the National Dialogue initiated by President Mbeki as a repetition of the failed CODESA. We reject this because it seeks to convince the nation that the path to our solutions today can be paved by legitimizing and entering into dialogue with an unrepentant leader of the apartheid regime, FW De Klerk.
Presidents Mbeki and Motlanthe can indeed take initiative to bring the nation together, and we shall participate because they both represent a human rights based democratic initiative. De Klerk, on the other hand, is no elder of our democratic dispensation and he will never be. He presided over the mass murder of our people in places like Boipatong and Vlakplaas. To include him in a dialogue about the future is not only an insult to this important past that he represents, but consistent with the idea that things will look legitimate simply because they include white leadership.
The National Dialogue is like CODESA whose compromises have led us to the socio-economic problems that we still face today: in particular land and nationalisation. Its inclusion of De Klerk must be seen as a reactionary move in a situation when all forces should unite against the kleptocratic regime of Jacob Zuma.
For De Klerk to claim that we have healed the wounds of the past demonstrates the very CODESA bankrupt thinking that our struggle was about reconciling with whites. Our struggle was about land restoration so that black people can legitimately call South Africa home. Until economic freedom is attained no white man or woman, anywhere in the world, must ever impose healing on black people. Our wounds have to do essentially with the dispossession of the means of production which to this day, are still a distant dream for black people.
Apartheid, which De Klerk presided over and benefited from, was a socioeconomic crime against the humanity of black people. Thus, it can only be overcome through economic freedom and not having tea and biscuits with racist mass murderers.
We shall never share a table with leaders of the apartheid regime. De Klerk is an unrepentant racist mass murderer who deserves to rot in jail. He has never been held accountable for his role in the implementation of apartheid; he can never be a solution to any problem that we face today. Like Zuma who belongs to jail for corruption and stealing money from the poor, so does De Klerk; he too belongs in jail for his role under apartheid!
De Klerk must go into hiding in shame for the things he has done to black people in this country. He is not qualified to give any advice on what should constitute the future of South Africa.
A national dialogue that is serious about resolving South Africa's challenges must take place where people stay not in some suburb with air conditioned venues. A genuine national dialogue must also be constituted by relatively young people who represent the future, and whose future is at stake; not some old age arrangement that simply reinforces gerontocracy.
Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 5 May 2017
