EFF STATEMENT ON TWENTY TWO YEARS OF FREEDOM

27 April 2016

The EFF marks twenty two years of political freedom today. We celebrate the political gains of that came with the end of apartheid in 1994. In particular, we celebrate the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution and bill of rights; the right to life, the right to freedom of assembly, the right to freedom of expression, association, and the right to vote and be voted for to mention a few.

On this day, twenty yeas into democracy, our country is begging to experience the erosion of these freedoms and rights under the government of the day. It is a fact that when the ANC government killed people in Marikana, Mothutlung, Relela and in many other protests across the country it was in violation of  their right to life and protest. Any government in the world, even if voted by the majority, is illegitimate if it can kill its own people with impunity.

Twenty years into democracy, the government of the day is also eroding the fundament ideal of the rule of law which is premised on the fact that all shall be equal before the law. Many politicians of the ANC publicly break the law and nothing ever happens to them. The ANC president violated the constitution, above benefiting from a corrupt upgrade of his private home, and he is still allowed to preside over the very constitution he has violated. We believes that twenty years into democracy, the greatest threat to the ideal of the “rule of law” is the ANC which as a collective, not only protests those who break the law, but also rewards them with government positions.

Our democracy, even in its greatest days, was always empty of economic benefit, except to protection of the wealthy and the privileged. The poor, who are black in their majority, remain in desperate poverty and dire living conditions because our democracy fails to translate into economic freedom. The only day this democracy will be sustainable and of quality is if it delivers land to the landlessness. Without the land our democracy traps the whole society into a fast approaching time bomb.

The EFF believes that to honour and celebrate twenty years of democratic society is to lead a process of land redistribution on an urgent basis. Economic freedom whose starting point is access to land is the most urgent need for the sustenance of democracy moving forward. Any democracy built on landlessness is doomed to fail, because without land majority of our people cannot legitimately claim this country as their own.

On Freedom Day, we call on the people of South Africa to reject the ANC which is not only beginning to erode people’s rights to life by killing them, but also protecting the violation of the constitution and the rule of law. We call on the people of South Africa to reject the ANC because it is also incapable of restoring land and guaranteeing economic freedom. We also call on the people of South Africa to reject the ANC in all municipalities during the elections on 03 August, 2016 for all its corruption and the strife it has subjected our people to.

We call on this because political freedom is incomplete and unsustainable without economic freedom. Economic Freedom is also impossible in an economy that is left to the market to solve unemployment and poverty. The statistics of the Commission for Affirmative Action prove that black people are still under appreciated by white led companies. This is despite the fact that the almost all companies in our economy remain white owned, white male dominated and led. It is therefore irresponsible of a black government to rely on markets led by white racists to resolve the economic problems of black people.

Economic Freedom will dawn for all people, in particular black people, when the government plays an active and direct role in the economy through nationalisation of strategic sectors like banks and mines. Only a government whose macroeconomic policies seek to de-commodify basic needs like education, healthcare, sanitation and housing by making sure they are free and of quality will translate our democracy into economic freedom. The EFF remains the only political party with a commitment to peoples economic freedom and that will not leave it to a white dominated, anti-black marker.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 27 April 2016