Amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment, EFF leader Julius Malema says African migrants are being scapegoated for crises they did not cause.
Malema maintained that unemployment, inequality and failing public services are a result of deeper structural and historical economic injustices, arguing that the blame should not be placed at the doorstep of migrants.
Migrants did not privatise state capacity. Migrants did not concentrate ownership of land and industry. Migrants did not construct an economy incapable of absorbing labour
— EFF leader Julius Malema
“Poor Africans from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia or elsewhere on the continent are not responsible for unemployment, inequality, or collapsing public services. Migrants did not privatise state capacity. Migrants did not concentrate ownership of land and industry. Migrants did not construct an economy incapable of absorbing labour.”
Instead, the EFF leader has criticised the attempt to redirect legitimate social anger away from capital and toward vulnerable African communities, accusing it of protecting the structures responsible for mass suffering.
“This is what global white supremacy relies on, as this is a system they put in place over a hundred years ago.
“The growing phenomenon of Afrophobia within South Africa must therefore be confronted with absolute political clarity because it represents one of the most dangerous expressions of false consciousness within the working class.”
Malema was addressing the conference of the left arranged by the SACP with various political formations to discuss the challenges facing the poor and working class.
He called on the “left” to defend Pan-African solidarity because failure to do so would mean that it had abandoned its own mission, he said.
“The fragmentation of African people along nationalist and xenophobic lines merely strengthens imperialism and weakens working-class unity. This is why the question of left unity has become historically urgent because capitalism today operates globally through co-ordinated systems of finance, technology, military power, and ideological production, while progressive forces remain separated, defensive, and organisationally weak.”
Malema told the plenary that while organisations claiming commitment to socialism drag their feet, capitalist forces are organising, which places their mission on the back foot.
“International capital co-ordinates across borders with extraordinary efficiency, yet organisations claiming commitment to socialism often remain paralysed by sectarianism, ego, historical resentment and ideological confusion.
“The inability of progressive forces to develop coherent organisational unity while capitalism consolidates globally represents one of the defining contradictions of our historical period.”
He said the future of African liberation depends fundamentally upon continental solidarity, regional industrialisation, and co-ordinated resistance against global systems of extraction and dependency.
Referring to Frantz Fanon, the EFF leader quoted him as correctly understanding that colonialism and capitalism were not merely systems of economic exploitation but systems designed to deform human consciousness itself.
Domination becomes easiest when oppressed people begin directing their anger against one another instead of against systems of power
— Julius Malema
“Domination becomes easiest when oppressed people begin directing their anger against one another instead of against systems of power.
“Workers are encouraged to compete against workers, Africans against Africans, migrants against citizens, men against women and poor communities against one another, while financial elites and multinational corporations continue consolidating wealth and power on a grand scale.”
Malema stated that this contradiction was most visible in Africa, where the continent’s immense natural wealth continues to exist with widespread poverty.
“Africa remains inserted into the global economy primarily as a supplier of cheap labour, raw materials, and an extraction opportunity for international markets. That warning remains profoundly relevant because many post-colonial states continue operating within economic frameworks fundamentally designed to preserve external dependency and domestic class inequality.”
He said it was common cause that the African political elite often inherited the state but not the economy, and in many cases sections of that elite eventually integrated themselves into global systems of capitalist accumulation rather than transforming them.
“The majority acquired political rights without corresponding economic power, and therefore the promises associated with liberation became increasingly difficult to sustain materially because democracy without economic transformation leads to disillusionment.”
The conference continues at Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre this weekend, where various leaders of political formations will make addresses and engage in commissions.
The gathering will conclude on Sunday with the adoption and declaration of resolutions on the council of the left.
TimesLIVE
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