Durban - EFF Commander-In-Chief Julius Malema says his party Labour Desk will be ready throughout the country to fight for workers who will be victimised by their employers for taking part in the party’s national shutdown on March 20.
Malema was on Wednesday briefing the media on the state of readiness for Monday’s national shutdown at the party’s Winnie Mandela House headquarters in Braamfontein, Joburg.
Among other things, the march is aimed at pushing President Cyril Ramaphosa into resigning following his Phala Phala scandal in which millions of dollars were stolen during a break-in at the farm in Limpopo in February 2020. It will also highlight the plight of load shedding, unemployment and a stagnant economy.
“How do you apply ‘no work no pay’ when I decided I am coming to work and the roads are closed by protesters and I can’t have access to work? It’s not me who decided not to come to work, I was readily available.
“It happens every day in South Africa when we wake up, the roads are closed and we can’t get to work. What happens in that context? That’s what is going to happen. No one can say to a worker ‘no you didn’t come to work, you went to the protest therefore you are not going to be paid. No I was readily available, there was no bus, there was no taxi’,” Malema said.
He said in other areas the EFF had a mutual agreement with taxi associations to close down and not to operate on the day.
He said their shutdown would be the beginning of a revolution that could start on March 20 and never stop.
“There is a possibility that it might not stop. What if that is the beginning of the revolution? We have a date with the 20th of March, we are not here for the first time when we removed Zuma these are some of the first steps we took.
“It was not on the same day that we said Zuma must fall that Zuma fell. It took a number of activities for us to arrive when we said Zuma must fall. This is the beginning of the revolution, we said to you Ramaphosa will never have peace.
“As long as he violated his oath of office he will never be a friend of the EFF and that is where we are,” Malema said.
He added that an instruction had been given to protesters in Phoenix, north of Durban, to protect themselves.
This follows the violence in Phoenix where 36 people were shot dead or hacked to death during the July 2021 unrests, characterised by mass looting and the death of over 350 people across the two provinces, that engulfed KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng.
“We know what those people are capable of, they must not outnumber you, they must not outsmart you. If they come with the same attitude, give them the same attitude twice. We are ready for Phoenix, we are ready for them. We are not going there like children, we are going into it ready for anything, if action is called upon that order will be given and we’ll respond,” Malema said.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE