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“The Daily Maverick is a political mouthpiece of the cabal led by Minister Pravin Gordhan, it can’t be objective hence our treatment of the publication as a political entity”.
EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu was justifying his party’s stance to not allow the publication to attend the EFF’s second National People’s Assembly.
“The Daily Maverick is a political and a communications instrument of Gordhan’s cabal. It’s a fact they use private intelligence to persecute political opponents.
“They don’t objectively investigate corruption and they have targets. The EFF is one of their targets,” said Shivambu.
He was addressing those media who were not barred from the party’s first day of its elective conference.
Earlier in the day, the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) accused the EFF of excluding specific media organisations from their events, and said this was “unconstitutional” and amounted to “intimidation”.
READ: We’re not censoring journalists, we don’t have the capacity for all of them – EFF
The forum also announced that it will be approaching Parliament requesting that it sanction EFF leader Julius Malema for violating the Constitution through his party’s stance of not allowing the Daily Maverick access the party’s Nasrec conference.
Malema said the publication had made its bed by not sending its journalists to the EFF’s numerous engagements during the year. Now, the EFF leader said, it should lay in it as the party was taking the stance to no longer allow them access.
“We made this announcement during the memorial service of the late former president of Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe) in September and the media is only making a fuss of this now.”
“We made it clear then, and we still maintain the stance that since the Daily Maverick has become a political entity we will treat it as such.
You will not see us invite the ANC’s communications team because they are a rival. We view the Daily Maverick in the same way,” said Malema.
RT @JKwritingz: Malema engages with journalists on why Daily Maverick has been barred from EFF briefings #EFFNPA2019 pic.twitter.com/RJc7upZGVH
— City Press (@City_Press) December 13, 2019
Earlier, the EFF had denied trying to muzzle certain media houses by refusing to grant some journalists accreditation to its elective conference this weekend.
Instead, the EFF says, it was due to a lack of capacity.This was explained by EFF secretary-general Godrich Gardee who said it would have been impossible to accommodate all the journalists who applied to attend their conference, as more than 600 had applied.
READ: The cost of the EFF’s elective conference? R32m and counting
“Over 600 media personnel applied for accreditation which means they would make up 25% of the delegates, this would have been more than the security that we have at the venue which is unworkable,” said Gardee.
The secretary-general addressed those who managed to get accreditation on Friday at the party’s state of readiness press conference.
He, however, further explained that “the ban, or whatever the media had chosen to name the stance taken by the EFF, had not been lifted and the Daily Maverick was still not welcome”.
The EFF conference runs until Monday by which time the party’s new leadership would have been voted into office.
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