The Star Early Edition

EFF increasing­ly looks like a good bet

- PETER BACHTIS DR PRERTY TSHISEVHE

DAVOS is a meaningles­s and expensive annual meeting to discuss problems facing a world beset with overpopula­tion, malnutriti­on and destructiv­e climate change... an agenda packed with negativity.

Working committees should be sent to countries that are in dire straits, living amongst, and observing for one week, the trials and tribulatio­ns of humans who exist off scraps.

These committees made up of wealthy and influentia­l fat cats need to feel the hunger, waking up each day with nothing, where death would be MADAM & EVE welcome, to leave an uncaring and hostile world.

Then these committees should report back to the even bigger fat cats at Davos, ensuring immediate action to alleviate some of the suffering that millions around the world face daily.

Davos should be a force and conduit for positive change globally, for at this time it is nothing more than a meaningles­s get together of the haves, whose conscience has been pricked, about the plight of the “have nots”. Lakefield, Benoni THE EFF Soshanguve rally was a mightily impressive event, full of rousing speeches and lofty promises like doubling social grants. The EFF, which has yet to run as much as a village municipal council on its own, will find it a lot more difficult to fulfil generous election promises, as the ANC found out after 1994.

We all take different positives and negatives out of CIC Julius Malema’s rousing speech.

There were many encouragin­g factors.

The most encouragin­g part of the CIC’s speech for me was his brave and stolid condemnati­on of xenophobia, which is contaminat­ing Mzansi. He pointed out that Africa’s borders were, in any case, drawn up by the European colonialis­t land grabbers in 1892, and specifical­ly the Boers and English invaders in our own country.

The EFF is therefore the only brave major political party to buck the trend of disgusting and dangerous Afrophobic postulatio­n, first shamefully propagated for political gain by the right-wing DA and subsequent­ly by the ANC, so as not to be left behind in the bigotry stakes.

I was disgusted when listening to an SAFM afternoon talk show last week after news of the Durban Metro Council raids on spaza shops. The radio host disgusting­ly orchestrat­ed a frenzy of xenophobic hate speech. There was a full three hours allowed by the bigoted host of caustic and highly irresponsi­ble Afrophobic invective.

It is encouragin­g to see the EFF is not following that irresponsi­ble path, and is showing up the DA and ANC bigots and the section of the media who parrot the hate speech like sycophanti­c puppets.

I do have doubts about Malema’s vilificati­on of new NPA boss Shamila Batohi. Maybe he fears she will come after the EFF and is taking the stance of the best form of defence is attack?

But, given the EFF’s strong anti-xenophobic stance, my precious vote is tilting strongly towards the Red Berets. Northcliff By Stephen Francis & Rico

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