Since the EFF establishment the party has been consistent with everything particularly fighting the social ills that black people find themselves in as a result of colonial subjugation and dispossession. We vehemently dismiss any attempt to sound politically correct, not with the CIC’s name or that of the EFF. Black exploited employees (journalists included) have found refuge in the EFF because our primary goal is to fight against the white supremacist system that is deeply rooted, solely benefiting white people.

Pseudo intellectualism in SA journalism is worrisome. We have been subjected to embedded reporting that seeks to divide or participate in political spaces, and defame the EFF. This agenda is driven by white journalists who get paid 3 times better than black journalists.

I believe that this has got to do with racism more than anything else. After reading an article written by Adriano and Stephen it gave a conceptual fidelity that this is a racial issue. We live in a country that is founded based on a structure of racism and dichotomized society. EFF went to parliament wearing overalls as a sign that they represent the agenda of the poor and proletariat that is an agenda that the EFF is driving for poor people to know that their interests and views are represented. This has got nothing to do what CIC does thereafter in his personal space, we are interested in Malema’s politics not what he does outside politics. 

Race is a very deep issue because any black radical organization is deemed to be a threat to democracy, the very same system that disproportionately benefits the white minority. Malema has been labelled as a bully and a racist, but racism in this country is experienced by black people every day because of capitalism and white privilege. Black people take trains to work that are overcrowded, we have never seen whites suffering like that, but the only racism that seems to be a problem is “Malema’s racism”. Black people in farms are shot dead after being mistaken with monkeys. That is the racism and violence that our black skins experience every day.

Steve Biko on integration from Black Souls in What white skins writes;

“Does this mean that I am against integration? If by integration you understand a breakthrough into white society by blacks into an already established set of norms and code of behavior set up by and maintained by whites, then YES I am against it. I am against the superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes the white a perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that). I am against the intellectual arrogance of white people that makes them believe that white leadership is a sine qua non in this country and that whites are the divinely appointed pace-settlers in progress. I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people”

Biko outlines the race struggle that is deeply rooted in colonial epistemology and continues to be a juggernaut in our education system. White journalists, in one sheer voice, come together to confuse our radicalism with hooliganism or being violent because they are enjoying white supremacy benefits and it is a platform for them to slander or insult our leader because they are not interested in our cause, the ending of black suffering and restoration of our dignity.

I will conclude by encouraging landless, property-less, asset-less and job-less black people to vote according to their interests not the narrative driven by media that portrays EFF conduct as more important than our struggle for land and to be regarded as human. I saw a video of a white hobo that received more public sympathy than black hobos that we pass on the streets and robots everyday. It is a sign that white privilege exist even for hobos but black people are not human enough to deserve sympathy. Journalism should be about impartial reporting and educating the society not to divide it, or push one sided agendas.

The danger of neo-liberal propaganda guised as an intellectual opinion- that is the main gist I got from your opinion piece. You openly show that you have never even attempted to exhaustively read the progressive People’s Manifesto of the EFF. By the way, the 170 page document of the EFF explains meticulously what needs to be done in the next five years to alleviate our people from poverty. But I’m not responding to speak about the Manifesto, the CIC has done so many times, and the Manifesto is also online, you are both researchers, go and read.

According to you, “In the EFF’s politics, white people are not treated as citizens and are continuously referred to as settlers in the EFF’S narrow discourse of African nationalism, even under conditions of post-colonial democracy.”- This is a lie. You furthermore go on to misquote Mahmood Mamdani to try and justify your agenda that the EFF hates white people and sees them as inferior.

Your opinion is idealism that is surrounded by laziness and amnesia or lack of analysis of the last 25 years in South Africa. You must understand that it is also a waste of time and begging to identify someone with something they don’t intrinsically identify with. Most white people don’t see themselves as Africans or South Africans for that matter. And we can’t blame them, they don’t live in the same country the black majority lives in, they don’t use the same mode of transport our parents use to get to work, they are nor charged the same interest rates the bank charges black people. Their South Africa and your South Africa are not the same.

That is why when we demand that the wealth of the land be redistributed equally to the people who are the backbone of the economy, they cry investors will leave or they’ll relocate to Australia or New Zealand. Here’s an analogy, they are like that guy who owns the soccer ball when we were growing up, he always threatens to leave when he is in the losing team, and when his team is out, he threatens to leave with the ball again and we must beg him because we still want to play. I’m sure you are following that the ball in this instance is the wealth of the country.

You see, it is easier for them to leave this country and go to another continent. They don’t feel the sense of pride you feel for the country. Honestly, I don’t even think the white people you are claiming are even worried about being called settlers. They themselves claim the word, they coined it themselves, they tell us their family histories beating their chests and with proud faces as to how they left Europe and came to “settle” in the colonies. In essence, Black people are the only people that actually believe in the Rainbow nation. For the record, we are not living in a post-colonial democracy, but in a neo-liberal democracy, where most of the wealth is sucked out of the belly of the country by multinationals companies who don’t give back anything to the people and are taxed to almost nothing.

You also mentioned that the EFF is “antagonising when the country is trying to heal the social fractures that replicate injustice and inequality”. Let us use some common sense. What is to heal? To heal is to mend to restore, right? What is to restore? To restore is to store back what was taken away? What was taken away? Our Cultures, Languages, Land and most paramount our Identity. And why do we demand all this back? To find confidence in ourselves and to imagine and live in a future that is determined by us. And us only. The social fractures that exist now are also from the economic displacement black people find themselves in. So to claim that the EFF is antagonising when in fact it is telling our people the truth is quite wayward and disturbing.

Finally please do better when trying to criticize the EFF, please read. You are both Social Sciences graduates after-all.