EFF leader Julius Malema has set his sights on wresting control of Eastern Cape municipalities from the ANC, including Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill, where the governing party could face exclusion from the November 4 local government elections over its failure to register candidates.
Launching the EFF’s election manifesto at the Rotary Stadium in Ngangelizwe, Mthatha, on Saturday, Malema told hundreds of supporters that the party wanted to take control of municipalities across the province.
He singled out Port St Johns, where the ANC failed to submit its ward and proportional representation (PR) candidate lists before the Electoral Commission’s August 28 deadline.
The ANC’s candidate-registration problems have affected four Eastern Cape municipalities, including Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill, where both its ward and PR nominations were excluded.
The court dismissed the ANC’s application to have its excluded candidates reinstated last week, but the party has indicated that it intends to appeal.
Malema said the EFF wanted to take advantage of the ANC’s absence from the candidate lists to secure control of the affected councils.
“The Eastern Cape is our province and a very strategic province which the EFF must take over and lead because the ANC in the Eastern Cape is dead and if you doubt that, you must go and ask the students at Walter Sisulu University.
“We started at WSU and we are going to take over the province of the Eastern Cape.
“Whether you are talking about Nyandeni, Mhlontlo, Ingquza Hill.
“We want to make sure that there is an EFF government in Port St Johns when we come back here on the 5th of November because the ANC failed to register candidates and we must show the lead.
“Our people are ready for the government of the EFF and you are the future of all of these municipalities that we must take, including KSD,” Malema said.
The EFF will contest Port St Johns against parties including the DA, MKP, UDM, PAC, Patriotic Alliance, African Transformation Movement and Afrika Mayibuye Movement, as well as two independent candidates.
In Ingquza Hill, it will face a wider field of parties, including the SACP, DA, MKP, UDM, Patriotic Alliance and PAC, alongside 14 independent candidates.
Malema said the party had selected young candidates to lead its campaigns and pledged to improve access to water, electricity, health care and education.
“We gave you young, energetic, powerful people who are going to lead the fight to economic freedom.
“We want water for every house. No house must drink water with the animals because we are human beings and we don’t want water from a common tap but in every yard.
“We want electricity, and reliable and affordable electricity because in SA we use coal to produce electricity and that coal does not come from outside SA, it comes from here,” Malema said.
He also called for poor households to be exempted from paying for water and electricity, proposing that municipalities use social grant records to identify residents who should qualify for free basic services.
“Are they poor during social grants and rich when they’re supposed to pay water and electricity? That does not make sense.
“In Ingquza Hill, KSD, Nyandeni, everywhere, they must go to Sassa offices and take that list and put it in the municipal system,” he said.
“It must automatically exclude those people from paying for water and electricity because they are poor.”
Malema urged elderly voters to stop supporting the ANC out of loyalty to former president Nelson Mandela, saying the party’s present leadership should be judged on its record in government.
He accused the ANC-led government of failing to uphold Mandela’s legacy and said Eastern Cape residents continued to face inadequate infrastructure and basic services.
“When he said aluta continua, Mandela never said the struggle is over. Mandela said the struggle continues.
“When we say a clinic must open 24 hours, it’s not because we are populist.
“It’s because we want to save lives. We want our children to be born in proper, well-equipped clinics.”
Malema said the province had produced some of SA’s most prominent anti-apartheid leaders, including Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Steve Biko, Govan Mbeki and Thabo Mbeki, but many communities continued to struggle with poverty and inadequate infrastructure.
“But when you look at it, it doesn’t look like a province that produces heroes.
“Only in the Eastern Cape do people on Saturdays cross rivers carrying coffins because there’s no bridge.
“Now, we [EFF] want a province where even people who are dead, they are given respect.”
He also promised to address the condition of schools, particularly those with inadequate sanitation facilities.
“Only in the Eastern Cape do children die, not in theory, die practically of poverty, of hunger.
“We are burying children here in the Eastern Cape because of hunger.
“Let the 4th of November stop the dying of our children in the Eastern Cape.
“Mud schools are found in the Eastern Cape, pit toilets are found in the Eastern Cape.
“The EFF can finish those schools within a year and restore the dignity of our children and give them a flushing toilet,” Malema said.
Daily Dispatch