/ MEDIA STATEMENT / The content on this page is not written by Polity.org.za, but is supplied by third parties. This content does not constitute news reporting by Polity.org.za.

The EFF reiterates its position that following the attitude of the DA on the land question in parliament, we will be tabling a motion of no confidence in the Mayor of Nelson Mandela, Athol Trollip on the 06 April 2018. No amount deliberate misrepresentation of the CIC Julius Malema’s statements as hate speech will deter us from punishing the DA for their attitude on the land question.

The DA knows that we used “throat-cutting” as a figure of speech for unapologetically and unsympathetically removing Trolip to mirror their own unsympathetic attitude toward black land loss. We use that metaphor to indicate that we are ending support for the DA due to its own racism. Because we have chosen to do this with Athol Trolip, the DA is escalating the fight so that all other mayors in Johannesburg and Tshwane can be removed. The point is, if they lose Trollip, they should also lose others, because other mayors are not white.

It is the DA’s general disregard of the crime of colonial and apartheid land dispossession that irks us the most. Each time the land question comes up, they deliberately disregard the evident and indisputable history of dispossession. Their argument, in essence, is that government must pay white people for land that was taken through a systematic crime against humanity.

During negotiations with the DA for governance in local municipalities, we never hid it from them that the EFF’s central revolutionary objective is land expropriation without compensation. We never hid it from them that given the opportunity to punish racism in their ranks, we will do so by using our voting power.

The back comments of DA members during the debate on land in parliament were insensitive to the pain of land loss by black people. This creates conditions for black solidarity in the entire political sphere on the land question. We view the attitudes as racist, and in defence of white privilege. Land dispossession in South Africa is the whole foundation for the indignity of black people and the supremacy of whites. It is how black people come to live on their knees, begging for existence at the table of white settler communities for more than 400 years.

Therefore, we make no apology that we will go for Athol Trolip. We will remove him as a mayor to communicate, provoke and impress on all DA white members that sensitivity to land loss by black people is a fundamental requirement for leading anywhere in the country. Trolip is a national DA member who ought to know that there are implications to the conduct of the DA in parliament to political decisions anywhere.

Finally, we are not willing to vote with the ANC if they ever put a corrupt candidate. We have given them a clear idea of the measure of a person that should lead Nelson Mandela Bay; such a person has to be a Mcebisi Jonas or come close to him in terms of integrity, anti-corruption and leadership qualities.

Issued by EFF