EFF Statement on the day of reconciliation: time to move to justice
16 December, 2013
On the day of Reconciliation, a day after Nelson "Dalibhunga" Mandela, the champion of South Africa's multiracial democracy was laid to rest in Qunu; Economic Freedom Fighters calls on the liberation struggle take the next stage, the stage of economic justice.
The day of reconciliation is a day the country is meant to reflect on its progress in defeating the apartheid and colonial racist socioeconomic legacy taken into consideration the victory of democratisation in 1994. Firstly, Economic Freedom Fighters celebrates the sterling contribution of Nelson Mandela and his generation in laying a solid foundation for the process of reconciliation to genuinely occur.
Secondly, EFF notes that the struggle to humanise black people who have been subjugated under centuries of racial segregation and injustice is far from complete. The democratic gift of Nelson Mandela's generation has not translated into liberation from abject poverty, unemployment and inequalities that remain racialised. Black people without land remain visitors in their own country, and without access to quality education they are subjected to permanent providers of cheap and easily disposable labour. This make any claim to reconciliation today disingenuous.
The Marikana massacre in particular, which saw the democratically elected government of the African National Congress collude with London Mines Company to slaughter 34 black mine-workers, signifies the stagnation of the reconciliation dream. The fight for which workers fell was in order to attain a living wage, which no law in the country guarantees.
EFF also commemorates the warriors of the Ncome Battle of 16 December, 1838 whose blood turned the Ncome river red (the red now signified in the red beret of the EFF) in defense of the land. These worriers were battling against colonial forces dispossessing them from their lands and of self-determination.
The same colonial project formed the Union of South Africa in 1910, the union which was essentially a union between white settler forces that were at odds with each other for centuries: the Afrikaners and the English. The centenary of the Union Building that is being marked by Zuma's government today is a celebration of this union, named out of the union of settler forces united in exclusion, subjugation and oppression of the native populations.
Economic Freedom Fighters therefore rejects the celebrations of the Union Building, and calls for its total renaming. To celebrate the Union Building as "union" is to celebrate history of black dispossession and exclusion.
For genuine reconciliation to occur, to break from the stagnation signified by Marikana, high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality it must be based on the pursuit of justice. And only a radical macroeconomic framework based on the seven cardinal pillars of EFF can bring about justice in South African society and break from the horror of the apartheid past. These are:
a. Expropriation of South Africa's land without compensation for equal redistribution in use.
b. Nationalisation of mines, banks, and other strategic sectors of the economy, without compensation.
c. Building state and government capacity, which will lead to the abolishment of tenders.
d. Free quality education, healthcare, houses, and sanitation.
e. Massive protected industrial development to create millions of sustainable jobs, including the introduction of minimum wages in order to close the wage gap between the rich and the poor, close the apartheid wage gap and promote rapid career paths for Africans in the workplace.
f. Massive development of the African economy and advocating for a move from reconciliation to justice in the entire continent.
Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, December 16 2013
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