MKMVA congratulates President-elect, Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa, and pledges our support to continue to work for the full liberation of all South Africans

23 May 2019

The Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) congratulates comrade Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa on his election yesterday in the National Assembly as the President of the Republic of South Africa. His election follows after the successful election campaign of the African National Congress (ANC) in which our Liberation Movement once again emerged victoriously.

As ANC members, the members of MKMVA, were fully integrated into the election campaign structures of the ANC, and we participated throughout the length and the breath of our country in the ANC election campaign. We acknowledge the hard work, and united collective effort, of all ANC members and leaders, who under the leadership of President Ramaphosa, placed the ANC as our organisation first, and who worked tirelessly to achieve our election victory.

On Saturday, the 25th of May, our members and the leaders of MKMVA will gather at Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Tshwane, and throughout the length and breath of our country together with millions of South Africans, to celebrate when another President of the ANC is once again inaugurated as the President of South Africa. In our minds this is not just the triumph of an individual leader, it is the truimph of ANC as a collective, and in fact of all the people of our beloved country, South Africa.

A great responsibility now rests on the broad collective shoulders of the ANC, as the majority party, to ensure that the interests of the masses of our people - most of who are still poor and deprived of economic power - will always be advanced and placed first. That is why the majority of our people voted for the ANC, and that is what the ANC must ensure will indeed happen.

Together with congratulating comrade President Ramaphosa, we also congratulate all Members of Parliament (MP'S), and especially our ANC comrades, who were sworn in yesteday as members of the National Assembly. The Presiding Officers of the National Assembly, comrades Thandi Modise (Speaker), and Lechesa Tsenoli (Deputy-Speaker) are also congratulated on their election to these high offices. Similarly we congratulate comrades Amos Masondo and Sylvia Lucas on their election respectively as Chair and Deputy-Chair of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).

The National and Provincial elections from which we emerged were the most challenging since the dawn of our democracy in 1994. The people of South Africa have given the ANC a clear message that, while they still strongly support the ANC, they now want the ANC to deliver on its progressive pro-poor policy positions.

While the ANC has achieved much to improve the lives of the majority of South Africans (mainly black and especially African) during the past 25 years, it is also true that more could have been done.

It is urgent, and critical, that the policy positions of the ANC, with specific reference to the pro-Radical Economic Transformation (RET) Resolutions of the 54th National Conference of the ANC, must now in actual practice transform from great and positive Resolutions/ intentions on paper, to practical and tangible implementation.

The land must be expropriated without compensation and returned to our people who are the rightful owners, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) must be nationalized, the financial institutions and banks must be radically transformed in order to serve the needs of our people, the National Health Insurance must be implemented, as well as the minimum wage, we must decisively stop the retrenchment of the working class, and stop the privatization of State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s). We must be true to our mandate to achieve free and universal quality education. Ultimately we must transfer full political and socio-economic power into the hands of the overwhelming majority of our people - Africans in particular, and the black people in general.

As our ANC Secretary General, comrade Ace Magashule, declared in his keynote address at the Walter Sisulu Memorial Lecture at the Waaihoek Methodist Church in Mangaung last Saturday, on the 18th of May: "... we dare not betray our true struggle for cheap media headlines, nor for the crumbs that come from the well-laden table of White Monopoly Capital. We dare not betray our people with a view to gain favours from those who owe us our land and very wealth".

MKMVA assures comrade President Ramaphosa that, similarly to how we full-out campaigned as part of the ANC election structures, we are fully behind him to achieve these objectives.

We dare not fail our people, and their legitimate hope for a better and just future. Any deviation from this course will be a betrayal of our liberation struggle, that so many of our MK liberation fighters have laid their lives down for, and we will never be party to such a travesty.

We are ready to put our collective shoulder to the wheel in order to implement the Second Phase of our National Democratic Revolution (NDR), and to ensure the full liberation of all the people of South Africa, which must include also their full economic liberation and empowerment.

For all of us as a collective of ex-MK combatants, and liberation fighters in the ANC, it must inevitably continue to be: Aluta Continua!

Issued by Carl Niehaus, NEC Member of MKMVA and National Spokesperson, 23 May 2019