EFF STATEMENT ON SECOND QUARTER ECONOMIC DECLINE AND RECESSION

Tuesday, 4 September, 2018

The EFF notes the second quarter decline by 0.7% after a 2.6% decline in the first quarter, which means South Africa is now on recession. Key sectors to South Africa's economy which are supposed to create jobs i.e. manufacturing and agriculture, have now recorded a second consecutive quarter of negative growth.

The recession which South Africa finds itself in should not come as a surprise. The EFF has consistently warned against the myth making and falsehood when dealing fundamentals of economics that are embedded in exploitation of black workers and extraction of raw mineral resources. The idea that you can grow the economy because you feel good about the person occupying the presidency and yet, he has not proposed any radical changes to the economy instead has called for endless summits, demonstrates the degeneration of thinking both by private sector and government.

The ANC has allowed the economy to degenerate at the hands of a greedy private sector and placed faith in the so-called markets when it is evident that their interest remain profiteering at all cost. At all instances when government has called on private sector to create jobs, transform the economy, address poverty and inequality, the call was ridiculed and brushed off.

President Cyril Ramaphosa and the collective ANC have demonstrated their inability restructure South Africa's economy into a meaningful, redistributive and transformative way. The fact that Ramaphosa is spending most of his time going around the world begging other countries to bailout our own state-owned entities, which he plans to privatize, is a clear indication of incoherence, confusion and lack of understanding of how to manage macroeconomic policy. South Africa is not better under the Ramaphosa-led ANC than it was under the Zuma-led ANC, except renewal of neoliberal forecasts that are misguided and shallow.

The EFF reiterates the call for a transformative economy which will see millions of black Africans participate in the economy, own the economy and create jobs. The EFF has introduced a Banks Amendment Bill in Parliament which seeks to enable state-owned banks and was deliberated on today in the Finance Committee with overwhelming support because it is through the financial sector that we will be able to grow the economy. The EFF has long interpreted the economy not based on media euphoria but concrete legislative proposals which will lead South Africa out of permanent state of recession.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 4 September 2018