THE EFF on Thursday announced that it would march to estates owned by South Africa’s richest person, billionaire businessman Johann Rupert, to show its “disdain” for the arrival of the first European settlers 370 years ago.
”In order to register our disdain for the arrival of white settlers in South Africa on April 6, 1652, which is the day when the problems of Africans began, the EFF will engage in a direct confrontation with Johann Rupert by marching to the stolen land he claims to own in the Western Cape and Mpumalanga,” the party said.
Rupert owns the L’Ormains wine estate in Franschhoek in the Western Cape as well as the Leopard Creek Golf Estate on the banks of the Crocodile River and bordering the Kruger National Park near Malalane in the Nkomazi local municipality in Mpumalanga.
Meanwhile, the EFF has replaced its MP Vuyani Pambo as the party’s spokesperson and instead appointed him the head of its presidency.
It announced another MP, Sinawo Thambo, as its national spokesperson alongside its former treasurer-general, Leigh-Anne Mathys.
The EFF said the moves followed after it considered redeployments of departmental heads.
In addition, the EFF said its war council also deliberated on redeployments of officials and commissars across provinces and said these resolutions would be communicated internally.
The moves follow the party’s war council meeting in Cape Town, where it declared 2022 the year of the branch.
According to the EFF, it will launch its mass recruitment programme to reach the ambitious target of having one million members by the end of this year in Soweto next Friday.
It also announced its programme of action, which includes public campaigns against the continued dependency of the country on loans from Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
Last month, South Africa received a $750 million (R11.4 billion) development policy loan from the IMF to support the government’s efforts to accelerate its Covid-19 response and protect the poor and vulnerable from the adverse socio-economic impacts of the pandemic and support a resilient and sustainable economic recovery.
In July 2020, the IMF approved $4.3 bn in emergency financial assistance to support South Africa’s efforts in addressing the challenging health situation and severe economic impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The EFF is also planning a march for jobs in the Joe Morolong local municipality in the Northern Cape to demand employment from the private sector for the community, youth and the poor.
Political Bureau