‘Cyril says fight virus on your own’

He’s abandoned Covid-19 fight – Malema

JULIUS Malema yesterday tore into the government for re-opening sectors of the economy, schools, churches and the sale of alcohol, saying it was abandoning its people to fight Covid19 on their own.

In a press conference, the EFF leader laid into the government for prioritising the economy at the expense of lives, lambasted the decision to re-open schools and criticised the government for lifting the ban on alcohol sales.

He also scoffed at white monopoly capital for its greed in a time of crisis and implored religious leaders not to open places of worship to show that they cared about their congregants.

He said the lockdown was supposed to afford South Africa space and time to fix a public healthcare system which had already been overburdened.

“Many of these facilities are dilapidated, under-resourced and understaffed. For many years now, to go to a public hospital in South Africa is to die and not to be saved from illness; the government has not renovated any hospital or made any significant improvements, and has admitted it.

He said the white community and some minority black elites would rely on fully functional and fully resourced private health care, which was at the ready to provide them a fighting chance and that many of them would recover, not because of better immune systems, but due to quality health care.

“However, black people in black communities who could’ve lived another 10 years will die, not because they have a bad immune system, but because they did not get healthcare,” he said.

Malema also lashed out at President Cyril Ramaphosa for saying, in his address to the nation on Sunday evening, that the battle against Covid19 was now in the hands of South Africans.

He said that Ramaphosa was effectively telling South Africans that he was no longer in charge and was surrendering the country to the looming Covid-19 catastrophe for the benefit of white monopoly profit interests.

“South Africa is not ready to end the lockdown, but despite publicly declaring the Covid-19 response would be guided by science, the president decided to bow to the selfish pressure of private white monopoly capital.”