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There is no white genocide in South Africa. In fact, the cause for concern should be the black genocide plaguing both America and South Africa.
These were the sentiments of Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema in response to US President Donald Trump’s tweets on South Africa’s decision to expropriate land without compensation.
Trump caused a storm in the early hours of Thursday morning when he took to social media and tweeted that he had instructed his secretary of state Mike Pompeo to look closely at “South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and large-scale killing of farmers”.
In response to Trump’s tweets, Malema said: “We remain unshaken; actually we are more determined to expropriate our land without compensation. There is no white genocide here, those sentiments are absolute rubbish.
“There is actually black genocide in the US. They are killing black people in the US. Black people are even being killed in South Africa,” said the visibly irate EFF leader.
Malema gave the example of “a white farmer who has recently been sentenced to life for killing a black worker”, and said that should it have been a black person who had committed this crime “it would be news all over the world”.
The EFF leader argued that there was no scientific evidence that supported views of white genocide in South Africa. He added that the EFF sought to send a strong message to the US authorities‚ just as the party had sent a strongly worded message to the Australian authorities when it informed the Australian government to “stay out of South Africa’s domestic affairs” earlier in the year.
“We must put it on record‚ unequivocally‚ [to] Donald ‘the pathological liar’ Trump: We are not scared of you and your US or Western imperialist forces‚” reiterated Malema.
The EFF leader was addressing a media briefing at the party’s headquarters in Braamfontein in which he also called for amnesty for Fees Must Fall activists.
“We cannot call students who fought for fee-free education criminals and put them in jails for fighting for a worthy cause. Placing them in prison will make them criminals, which they are not, so I call on the president and Parliament to pardon these students from facing criminal charges as well as their institutions to allow them to continue with their studies,” said Malema.
The EFF also used the media briefing to detail their elections manual and announce the party’s deployees for the 2019 elections and the provinces they will be mobilising support for the party.
Going back to the Trump tweets, Malema added that South Africa was a post-colonial country with deep racial inequalities that were long designed by apartheid and colonisation, which could only be addressed through the land expropriation programme.
Malema said the process would bring equality and human dignity back to black South Africans who had been robbed of this for a long time.
Malema warned South Africans that if they voted for the EFF next year they should be ready for the expropriation of the land and the consequences that would follow.
The EFF leader suggested that similar to what happened after the Zimbabwean government expropriated land, South Africa may also face sanctions for the act. He also added that there “are already white farmers who are receiving military training so as to act when the land expropriation starts” hence warned black South African to prepare themselves for such retaliations.
