SA should learn from Venezuela

MAIMANE: MEETS OPPOSITION MPS

Citizen reporter

Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane yesterday shared a platform with Venezuelan opposition members, in South Africa to raise awareness about the dire state of their country.

Primero Justicia (Justice First) members of parliament Miguel Pizarro and Jose Manuel Olivares, who has been in exile in Colombia after his family was threatened, were in Johannesburg to publicise what Maimane described as the devastating social, political, and economic crisis unfolding in the country.

“Miguel and Jose reached out to the Democratic Alliance as they recognise our party as a defender of liberal democracy and a champion of the advancement of freedom and human rights,” said Maimane.

Primero Justicia is the main opposition party in Venezuela. They hold 33 of the National Assembly’s 167 seats.

“However, the National Assembly has effectively been denuded of its powers in a clearly illegal and unconstitutional power grab by the authoritarian regime.

“The governing party – United Socialist Party of Venezuela – has 55 seats, but exercises near total power.”

He said that hearing first-hand accounts of the dire situation in Venezuela was important for South Africans, so they could hear the real story, “as there are some in our country – including in the ANC – who venerate and celebrate what has happened [there] as a model of ‘radical transformation’.

“These powerful lobbies in the ANC and their fellow travellers in other parties, are proposing and adopting policies that threaten to take South Africa down a destructive path.”

He said Venezuela had already enforced three interrelated policies that had inflicted huge damage to the country: expropriation of land without compensation, the nationalisation of banks, mines and other industries and institutionalised corruption through nepotism and cadre deployment. – Aladdin,