DISGUSTING: ANCWL MARCH TO SAY “HANDS OFF OUR PRESIDENT”

27 October 2015 

The brave women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 against the Pass Laws must be turning in their graves when they hear that the African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) is marching to the same Union Buildings to protect Jacob Zuma.

While the country is burning because of a lack of funding for higher education, the ANCWL is busy protecting their President whose time has expired. It is the very ANCWL which less than a year ago declared that there was no woman ready to take over as the President of the country.

COPE is not surprised that the ANCWL continues with its agenda of protecting their President. It is very clear that the ANCWL has long lost direction and that this new ANCWL exists solely for its own interests and not for the interest of women of our country. Women are the ones who really struggle to make ends meet just to make sure that their children go to school. One has to question the mentality of the ANCWL who can gather outside court on a daily basis against one person who had killed his girlfriend but who fail to see a need to march in support of our children who have no money to pay their university fees.

In any normal society, women are the protectors of the children. On Thursday 23 October, unarmed students marched to Parliament. The police brutally assaulted and manhandled them. This action was widely condemned. Only the ANCWL kept eerily quiet about it. Children’s lives were in danger and yet they said absolutely nothing. What kind of mothers and sisters are they?

COPE calls upon the women of the country to see the ANCWL for what it is - an organisation driven by greed and self-interests and with no the interest in the women of our country. We urge all women of the country to reject the ANCWL for the sham it is. The ANCWL is completely out of touch with present reality.

Statement issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE Spokesperson, 27 October 2015