EFF, AmaPanyaza square up during Lesufi’s SOPA

JOHANNESBURG - Water bottles were seen flying in Nasrec as members of the EFF squared up with Premier Lesufi’s crime prevention wardens - known as AmaPanyaza during the Gauteng leg of the State of the Province Address.

The Nasi Ispani recipients and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) members clashed just moments before Lesufi could deliver his final Sopa during the current administration at the Nasrec Expo Centre on Monday night.

Matters came to a head when the EFF’s Gauteng Deputy Chairperson and MPL, Phillip Makwala, rose on a point of order and questioned why the AmaPanyaza were at the Sopa instead of fighting crime in their communities.

The question caused the AmaPanyaza to respond with fury from the public gallery as they threw bottles and reacted angrily to the question. Gauteng Speaker Ntombi Mekgwe asked Makwala to sit down, but before he did, the angry crowd of Nasi iSpani beneficiaries responded to the EFF, while other Nasi iSpani directed their anger towards the EFF shouting ‘EFF must go’.

The EFF said those disrupting proceedings were ANC rent-a-crowd people, not members of the public.

The Nasi iSpani recipients present included the crime prevention wardens, green army, teacher education assistants and building inspector assistants that were among the 90 000 young people employed by the Gauteng government in the past year.

This caused proceedings to be disrupted for about 10 minutes before Lesufi was allowed to deliver his speech.

Meanwhile, Lesufi said they had refurbished over 3 000 spaza shops across the Gauteng townships and established a digital township business register database with over 20 000 township businesses already captured.

He said this was part of reclaiming township spaza shops and economy.