Pit toilets and the outsourcing of municipal jobs will be eradicated; three-bedroom houses with flushing toilets will be built in Kraaifontein and aspiring artisans won’t need a matric certificate to get municipal jobs.
These are some of the promises EFF leader Julius Malema made to a crowd of some 4 000 supporters during the party’s rally, at the Blue Ridge sports complex near Wallacedene on Saturday November 23.
Referring to the Covid-19 area – a shanty informal settlement that grew along Old Paarl Road last year – Mr Malema said: “Led by the EFF, shacks will be eradicated. Our people will never get decent houses from the DA. We want you to have proper quality houses with three bedrooms. It must have a lounge, dining room, a kitchen and a flushing toilet. A house is not a house without a flushing toilet.”
He said that when his party joined the Tshwane council as coalition partners, they insourced security guards, cancelled all the security tenders and increased the guards’ salaries from R3 500 to R7 500 with medical aid and other benefits.
That, he claimed, would be achieved in Cape Town if the EFF were elected.
The party wanted schools to be free from Grade 1 to Grade 12 and up to tertiary level
The EFF Student Command was already enforcing this policy at the UWC, UCT and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, he said.
“When a child comes from Kraaifontein with no registration, we register them by force. When they (tertiary institutions) refuse to register them, we tell them if a certain child cannot register, nobody will be registered at the university,” Mr Malema said to rapturous applause.
He called for feeding schemes at tertiary institutions.
Mr Malema said the EFF would push for the increase of child social grants from R350 to R700. However, he quickly warned: “Children must go to school. I’m not saying children must make children. You are too young to be making babies. A child is very expensive, and it does not only cost money.
“Even if we increase grants to R2 000, it would never be enough. A child is both mental preparedness and emotional preparedness.”
He said under EFF rule, SA Social Security Agency beneficiaries would not pay for water and electricity.
Mr Malema took a swipe at Helen Zille, the chair of the DA’s federal council, claiming she used black politicians as fronts to entice the black vote. ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa and billionaire Patrice Motsepe were not spared either. Mr Malema called them liars who served under the thumb of white oligarchs.
He said Mr Ramaphosa and Mr Motsepe trod carefully on the land question to placate powerful, white businessmen.
Asive Wala, 13, negotiated her way past security and a frantic crowd to greet Mr Malema and dance to EFF songs on stage. She displayed a pencil drawing of Mr Malema.
She told Northern News she started following Mr Malema with interest after he made a speech at the funeral of Winnie Madikizela Mandela. “He is fearless,” she said.
Speaking on the sidelines, staunch EFF supporter Luthando Skeyi, 24, said he attended the rally to listen to Mr Malema respond to some of the challenges Covid-19 residents face.
“I’m satisfied with what he said. We don’t have toilets there. About 80 residents use a communal toilet whose contents are collected once a month.”