EFF CALLS ON ZIMBABWEAN GOVERNMENT TO FOCUS ON PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS AND END STATE-SANCTIONED VIOLENCE AGAINST CITIZENS

Monday. 3 August 2020

The Economic Freedom Fighters has noted the empty condemnation against CIC Julius Malema by a paranoid and misguided ZANU-PF Embassy and party leadership. This comes after the EFF issued a statement questioning the political and economic logic of compensating white former land-owners for land acquired through the Fast-Track Land Reform Program. Instead of providing logic for this regression on land-reform. ZANU-PF party leaders have gone on a tirade that simply confirms that the decision comes as a result of succumbing to political pressure and a lack of understanding of the revolutionary history of Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwean government. which is currently engaged in the torture, incarceration, sexual assault and victimisation of protesters. has no moral authority or standing to claim to speak on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe. This government. which is compensating land thieves for land which was acquired through a revolutionary process, has declared the people of Zimbabwe as enemies, through the deployment of the military to suppress genuine protest. Journalists are targeted, and it is not the first time, as the Mnangagwa regime has a history of suppressing information, switching of social networks in order to hide the brutalisations of the people of Zimbabwe.

The EFF, therefore, as a movement committed to Pan-African unity. peace and stability in the continent, speaks with authority when it condemns the regression on revolutionary gains that have defined post-colonial Africa. The fleeting paranoia of ZANU-PF around factions of their organisation does not concern us, and we must never be confused as a part of a faction of ZANU-PF. The EFF does not owe ZANU-PF any allegiance. and we have now identified them as part of a long-line of oppressive regimes and failing liberation movements which no longer have a vision for the continent.

We are therefore not fazed by the utterances of ZANU-PF officials and reiterate that compensating white former land-owners is a reactionary move that Zimbabwe cannot afford, and these funds should rather be directed in uplifting the livelihoods of ordinary poor Zimbabweans and developing Zimbabwe.

Furthermore, we find it condescending that a diplomat, deployed to the Zimbabwean Embassy in South Africa has taken it upon himself to descend into the political arena with the EFF. As much as the EFF encourages engagement of its policy positions, it is not the duty of an ambassador who is here to sustain relations between two sovereign governments to engage in a political tussle with domestic opposition parties. We condemn this in the strongest terms as partisan and undiplomatic behaviour, and it will set a bad precedence for the future.

The ZANU-PF government and particularly the Zimbabwean embassy in South Africa must focus on putting an end to the violence in Zimbabwe instead of frivolous paranoia around G40 factions and the EFF.

We call on the African Union, and all governments in the SADC region to make an intervention in the crimes against humanity being committed by the Mnangagwa-regime against the people of Zimbabwe.

These interventions must be tangible, and we, therefore, call for the removal of the Zimbabwean Embassy in South Africa until human rights are restored in the country, and the lives of people are not taken by a repressive government.

Failure to do this will result in direct action by the EFF to prevent any official of the Zimbabwean government from participating in meeting in South Africa while they wage war on ordinary people in Zimbabwe.

Quiet diplomacy by SADC towards human rights violations in Zimbabwe has never worked, and it will not start working now. There must be an end to the arrest without trial and victimisation of activists, and all progressive forces must condemn the ZANU-PF government for the brutality it is practicing on the people of Zimbabwe.

We cannot keep quiet while a military regime wages war on people in Zimbabwe.

Issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 3 August 2020