EFF president Julius Malema has called on the presidents of Brics member countries to boycott the summit of the economic bloc set to be held in South Africa next month.
Julius Malema made the call during his speech at the EFF’s tenth anniversary rally, where 100 000 supporters turned up at the FNB Stadium yesterday.
According to Julius Malema, China, India, and Brazil must stand in solidarity with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has elected not to come to South Africa, after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office this month announced that Putin would give the summit a pass by mutual agreement between Russsia and SA.
Julius Malema said Ramaphosa had to take the blame for succumbing to ICC pressure and believes that his colleagues at Brics must isolate him.
“We want to say to president Putin that it was not us who refused you to come into the country. It is the coward Ramaphosa who could not guarantee that we would not arrest Putin,” said Julius Malema, adding that Ramaphosa had chosen to listen to threats by the US to remove SA from Agoa if it allowed Putin into the country.
“We call on the presidents of China, India and Brazil not to come to the Brics Summit in solidarity with president Putin. They must say, ‘you touch one of us, you touch all of us’.”
Julius Malema began his speech by slamming doomsayers who had predicted the EFF would die in no time.
According to him, the EFF had proved its detractors wrong and achieved 10 years of existence stronger than ever because it was built on solid ideological grounding, not personalities. The mainstream media was not spared.
He said the EFF, since its formation, had not betrayed its core constituency, which is the “neglected masses of our people”.
As expected, he took jabs at the ANC accusing it of failing to lead the country to prosperity.
He highlighted the crime and corruption problems that have spiralled out of control and accused the governing party of failing to end loadshedding.
These are problems that will disappear at a drop of a pen, he said, should his party get the popular mandate at the national and provincial polls next year.
“When we take over, all the informal settlements shall be formalised. Our people must get clean water. We need water and sanitation now,” he said.
“Eskom is collapsing. We do not want loadshedding in South Africa, we want uninterrupted power supply.”
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