Save SA firebrand lights up EL
PORT Elizabeth firebrand and former UDF anti-apartheid activist Mkhuseli Jack was in East London yesterday, recruiting East Londoners to join the Save SA campaign and remove President Jacob Zuma.
Addressing a group of prominent leaders and concerned individuals, Jack said the time for the president to step down had come, before he put the future in greater jeopardy.
“This is a national crisis. Zuma should be guiding, protecting, defending and advancing the constitution, but instead he has demoralised and divided every institution in the country.”
Jack said things had been on a steady decline since Zuma took the presidency in 2009. “National debt has moved from 26% in 2009 to 50.10% in 2015. Unemployment is standing at 34%. How does it come to be, when during even the peak of the great depression, it was at 25%? White monopoly isn’t a factor, the numbers speak for themselves.”
He was condemning accusations that the Save SA campaign was trying to protect white monopoly capital. “We are all affected by the problems in South Africa. Capture is creeping into every sphere. The Guptas have upgraded their methods of looting. Instead of going through tenders and contracts, they now want direct access to the money. All this has come about because Zuma doesn’t value money.
“If his wives or girlfriends or children want R10-million, he makes it happen through tenders, and pulls his money aside.
“We are headed for a national collapse. If we sit back and keep quiet, where are we headed to?”
Jack said the Save SA campaign was not a political party. “We see ourselves as a civic movement that is driving this with the aim of knocking into the heads of South Africans the dangers facing the country if Zuma stays in power.”
These dangers, he said, were capture of the treasury, corruption, and failure of the parliament to hold the executive accountable.
Jack said that those who became part of the movement must be ready to bear the brunt at all costs.
“Let us show we mean business.” —