This past weekend Gauteng Province accommodated two of the biggest political rallies, as the African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) finalised their campaigns for the 2019 National General Elections. Both organisations had successfully attended rallies in Ellis Park Stadium and Orlando Stadium respectively. A show of force to what is termed “Stadiumology” in political spaces. However, this piece will not be dealing with Stadiumology.

In his address the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), CIC Julius Malema, spent a great deal of time speaking on the Economic Emancipation of black people. He spoke of an “Economic Apartheid” which is still haunting the black majority of South Africa. Though black people are allowed political participation, through voting and organising civil society, the economy and wealth of the country still remains in the hands of the white minority. As a vanguard party, the EFF has inherited the responsibility from a corrupt and directionless ANC, to restore the dignity of black people. This will lead to the destruction of the superiority complex which exists amongst white people, and the CIC diagnosed this as what white people fear the most.

There is a fraudulent narrative which has potential to steer the moral compass of South Africa if not critically attended to. We therefore have a responsibility to guard our consciousness from this white lie. The birth of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa has revived the long silent and subtle, though very determinant voice of the White Liberal in the political scene of South Africa. There is no dinner table, social gathering, and or sporting event which concludes its business without comments on the EEF, its radical posture and of course a great deal of fearmongering.

White people, in their cliquey corners, sing in unison of the coming apocalypse days when the EFF supposedly leads black people en masse to their homes, terrorises them and their children, thereafter chasing them to the sea. Black domestic workers and garden boys are periodically asked about their views on the EFF and some of the policies, more especially on land. These questions are accompanied by a pseudo concern of the livelihood of all South Africans, and the horrifying impact this EFF led apocalypse will have on poor black people and South Africa as a whole. Obviously this is all pretence, because if they cared about the domestic workers and garden boys, they would start by paying them well and stop ill-treating and exploiting their labour.

These awkward political conversations that white bosses have with their black workers have little to do with patriotism, but rather an obsession to regularly check the level of consciousness and impatience within the black landless majority of South Africa. Black professionals are also not sheltered from these awkward conversations which centre white paranoia and existence. The tea breaks, staff functions and end of year parties which must, at some point, turn into political rants about the future of South Africa and the coming apocalypse if the EFF is to take power. These too have little to zero honesty, as the very white workers get paid more than their black colleagues doing the same job.

CIC Julius Malema in his address at the EFF #TshelaThupaRally in Soweto, reiterated that the policy documents and foundational principles of the EFF are written clearly and in English. Nowhere in the policies of the EFF is there a call to slaughter white people. In fact, the CIC argued that it is white people, more than anyone else, who know the stance of the EFF. Largely because it is written unambiguously and in their mother tongue.

The question we must ask is, what really fuels this paranoia which has no factual basis, as far as the policies and principles of the EFF are concerned. Well, one need not to look nor drive far to see the answer. Recently the Times Magazine featured on its cover, the vile site of South Africa’s glaring inequality. The site of South African townships juxtaposed against the opulent suburbs. It is in South Africa, where you will find the poorest of the poor separated by a single road from the wealthy.

Last year the World Bank released a report showing South Africa with the highest Gini Coefficient out of 149 countries. The Gini Coefficient measures the level of income and wealth distribution. It does this by looking at, among other things, consumption and expenditure patterns within a particular country. South Africa remains the most unequal society in the world. In other words, in South Africa, the top one percent of the population enjoys incredibly disproportionate levels of income and wealth.

The University of South Africa (UNISA) released a report in 2015, which found that 70.9 percent of the country’s wealth is owned by the top one percent, whilst the bottom 60 percent holds a pitiful 7 percent. The numbers have become worse since then.

As many of these studies have revealed, the people who are on the receiving end of this “Economic Apartheid” are black people. It does not take rocket science to find the genesis of this economic curse on the black majority of South Africa. Inequality in South Africa was (is) racialized. The white minority enjoys economic prosperity, whilst the black majority remains in the squalor that is township and rural life, and the margins of the economy.

It is this reality that white South Africa has found comfort in, and quite gloomily, it is this very reality that even the black majority has found comfort. The nature and design of the settlements and conditions which black people live under in South Africa would never make a place of habitat even for the dogs of white people. Black people have made homes out of places which do not resemble home. Black people have made safety and happiness out of places which were designed to suffocate and lead them to slaughter one another. After the 1994 moment, which depoliticised many black communities, by creating a false sense of hope, freedom and unity, black people became comfortable under uncomfortable conditions.

The emergence of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) becomes a major disturbance to this superficial sense of hope and freedom, and therefore a threat to the privilege and economic monopoly enjoyed by the white minority population. The seven non-negotiable cardinal pillars of the EFF are a programmatic expression of the quest for Economic Freedom. Economic Freedom for the black majority. Not economic exploitation of white people, or economic exclusion of white people. It is this clarion call to all the landless, property less, unemployed and exploited masses of South Africa which brings shivers down the spines of the white minority.

Guyanese historian and political activist, Walter Anthony Rodney, writes of the relationship that economic power has with racism, and the superiority complex of white people. In his analysis he argued that racism cannot be separated from the economic divisions within a particular society and the economic system which creates and maintains them. In Chapter 3 of his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1973), he writes, “…no people can enslave another for centuries without coming out with a notion of superiority, and when the colour and other physical traits of those peoples were quite different it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist form.”

Rodney continues, “However, it can be affirmed without reservations that the white racism which came to pervade the world was an integral part of the capitalist mode of production. Nor was it merely a question of how the individual white person treated a black person. The racism of Europe was a set of generalisations and assumptions, which had no scientific basis, but were rationalised in every sphere from theology to biology.”

What is clear from Rodney’s writings and many other scholars who have taken the time to think and theorise about the problems of Africa, is that there is a permanent marriage between economic power and racism. The superiority complex of white people goes hand in hand with their group control and monopolisation of the means of production.

CIC Julius Malema, drives this point home when he explains how the first encounters white children have with black people is, as domestic workers in their houses, garden boys, petrol attendants, ground staff in their schools, workers in shopping malls, and or behind tills. So, for them to now start to imagine these people, black people, as being equals becomes a schizophrenic experience. This is what troubles white South Africans the most. The inability to imagine a genuinely integrated and equal South Africa. The integration that Steve Biko spoke of, not the superficial 1994 Rainbow Project. The Economic Freedom Fighters are in pursuit of this egalitarian society, and the white people know this more than anyone else. It is the privileges they stand to lose in the process which convert them to doomsayers and fear mongers of a fictitious EFF led apocalypse.  

Adriaan Basson as a young Afrikaner boy you should know that the systematic fault lines that prevents growth and equality in South Africa are the results yielded by apartheid and ANC as the managers of white supremacy. Julius Malema is not taking an advantage of the situation but he is a true revolutionary within the political arena who has been championing the struggles of black people in this country.

Just to expose that your articles are propounded directly from your white privilege pseudo intellectualism that seeks to misdirect facts by shifting the blame on CIC for South Africa’s rainbow nation project of Mandela. The violence and opportunism you referring to are just an attempt to show that you are precursor in pushing the liberal ideology that seeks to coerce us black people to accept the multiracialism project whilst claiming monopoly on intelligence.

We remain landless after 25 years of this mythical democracy that disproportionately benefits the white minorities, the inequalities has been worsened by the ANC the current managers of the system who are now ensuring that white people continue to benefit at our expense from subjugation black people and black exploitation. Walter Rodney many years ago wrote a book “How Europe underdeveloped Africa”

“If anything, it shows how resilient neo-colonialism has proved to be as well as how fundamentally untouched its economic edifice remains. The apparent paradox whereby the richest continent on earth in natural resources is also the poorest hasn’t lost any of its bitter ironies. Africa is at the centre of global economic interests, with major powers still scrambling over its highly lucrative resources. Though stereotypically perceived as the quintessential recipient of humanitarian aid, Africa still is, for the most part, being deprived of its own wealth rather than benefiting from charitable, outside help”

The lack of understanding of the dominant discourse around post-Apartheid reparations, White people never lost anything in 1994 project despite the historical events of dispossession and pernicious laws of colonialism that caused a dichotomy in South Africa. Black people continue to be haunted by poor political decisions of 94 that were tantamount to these inequalities we see today.

The violence that you say the EFF is pushing for is the exactly the same white privilege we referring to that you think as a white guy you going to be prescribing moral rectitude for the oppressed black people, it is not violence but resentment of black people against the system that has made it to be palatable that we must continue to be oppressed. We cannot be complicit to our oppression, as a young white boy you should know that white privilege works for you by virtue of being born with a white skin in this country can open many doors for you.

Since the establishment of the EFF there is no violence nor opportunism except for championing the struggle of black people, Julius Malema has revived the political conscious of many people, This shows that the racial antagonism that we live under in this country are permanent because the oppressive system was never dismantled. The EFF has made sure that all the security guards and cleaners are insourced for them to have a better salary, this means that for so many years ANC had agreed to use the same apartheid model of the indenture system. This struggle began in the University of South Africa by the former EFFSC president Mpho Morolane, The city of Johannesburg and Tshwane Metro also insourced workers.

Not only did the EFF achieve the aforementioned in the short space but also held public consultations in the whole country without violence or fights during the processes because the EFF is genuine to the economic emancipation of black people.