EFF accused of hypocrisy after Kleinfontein march
Supporters of the EFF march to Kleinfontein, a Afrikaner-only settlement near Pretoria, 2 May 2025, to demonstrate its disapproval of what it described as a racist 'whites only enclave' in a democratic state. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen
The EFF marched to the Afrikaner-only settlement in Kleinfontein on Friday demanding that its 'segregation' policies be abolished.
EFF Gauteng chairperson Nkululeko Dunga said the party was against an area only wanting one race to live there.
'We can never allow an area to be a white-only area, where black people are only subjected to sweat and slavery but cannot reside in that area. There is no single area in South Africa or even the City of Tshwane that is a black-only area,' he said.
'Kleinfontein must fall, it must cease to exist,' he said.
ALSO READ: Kleinfontein: EFF says police 'protecting insecurities of white people' (VIDEOS)
WATCH: EFF marches to Kleinfontein
EFF accused of political theatrics
However, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) on Saturday said the EFF's march to Kleinfontein 'was nothing but political theatrics'.
It accused the EFF of trying to turn attention away from the poor performance of the Tshwane government. The EFF is in a coalition with the ANC and ActionSA in Tshwane. Other parties in the coalition government are the ACDP, AIC, DOP, PA, PAC, ATM and GOOD.
FF+ also accused the EFF of having a 'dangerously inflammatory and destructive culture'.
It said a video of the EFF's MMC for Environmental Affairs in Tshwane, Obakeng Ramabodu, vandalising an AfriForum sign at Kleinfontein demonstrates this.
[WATCH] Obakeng Ramabodu, the Environment MMC in Tshwane and EFF regional leader, attempts to destroy an Afriforum board in Kleinfontein – a Whites Only Community.
Ramabodu is told to mind that he's a city official and 'ground forces' will be sent to take it down. @JusstAlpha pic.twitter.com/p4XM5hYh8s — EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 2, 2025
EFF hypocrisy over Kleinfontein?
The FF+ further said it was hypocritical of the red berets to accuse Kleinfontein residents of illegally occupying the land.
'The EFF, as a governing coalition partner in the Tshwane Metro, deliberately chose to target Kleinfontein, an Afrikaner cultural community, but tolerates over 500 illegal informal settlements in the metro and approximately 20 illegal developments functioning within the metro that do not meet formalisation requirements or pay taxes,' said Jaco Mulder, the party's provincial leader in Gauteng.
'In addition, the metro does not provide any services to the Kleinfontein community.'
NOW READ: PICTURES: EFF march to Kleinfontein
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
IOL News
13 hours ago
- IOL News
The evolution of elite pact-making and Black exclusion in South Africa
The writer says Bantustanism extended the whites-only pact logic by delegating pseudo-sovereignty to handpicked black elites. Image: Supplied SOUTH Africa's century-long tradition of elite pact-making began with the 1910 Union, which forged white unity through excluding black South Africans from political life. In response, black elites — mostly Christianised African professionals and chiefs, collectively known as amazemtiti or 'Black Englishmen' — formed the ANC in 1912, hoping to counter this settler compact through petitions and appeals to imperial justice. 'Tell England that we are not the barbarians they think we are.' — Sol Plaatje, 1914 formal protest letter to King George V against the Native Land Act, pleading for imperial intervention in the face of racial dispossession. The 1926 Mines and Works Act reserved skilled jobs for whites, fuelling black elite frustration. This blatant economic ceiling, after failed imperial appeals, birthed the ANC's militancy. It exposed the futility of moderate tactics against entrenched racial economic hierarchy. The 1948 electoral victory of the Nationalist Party entrenched this exclusion. Afrikaner elites, with strong rural and Calvinist bases, racialised the pact further via apartheid legislation. In reaction, the Pan-Africanist Congress split from the ANC in 1959, accusing it of elite moderation and multiracial appeasement. As apartheid hardened, the Afrikaner state's rule grew more authoritarian and centralised, especially between 1948 and the 1990s. White English capital propped up the apartheid state and its mechanisms in exchange for access to cheap, surplus black labour and secure property rights. Bantustanism extended the whites-only pact logic by delegating pseudo-sovereignty to handpicked black elites. Figures like Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Lucas Mangope and George Mathanzima gained prestige, salaries, and some local control, fostering envy among exiled ANC leaders sidelined by apartheid's rigid racial hierarchy. These leaders, too, awaited their turn to ascend, setting the stage for a future elite pact under the guise of democracy or political freedom. Thus, South Africa's struggle history is also a story of elite contestation and accommodation, rather than always one of popular liberation. South Africa's celebrated 'miracle' transition conceals a sobering truth: freedom was negotiated through elite pacts that prioritised stability over justice. The ANC and the Nationalist Party, along with entrenched white capital, made deals that ensured political change while protecting economic dominance. This foundational compromise, created in secrecy, embedded apartheid's structural inequalities into democracy's core, deliberately excluding the black majority from genuine economic liberation. The effects are still felt painfully today. The late 1980s witnessed secret talks between Nationalist Party leaders and imprisoned ANC figures, including Nelson Mandela. Confronted with sanctions and unrest, white capital initiated contact, seeking guarantees for their assets. These covert negotiations, bypassing democratic input, defined the narrow limits of the transition. As transitional scholars, Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter argue, such pacts inherently prioritise elite 'vital interests', inevitably marginalising broader societal demands for radical redistribution from the outset. The Codesa negotiations formalised this elite bargaining. While multi-party, real power resided with the ANC and the Nationalist Party. The resulting Government of National Unity (GNU) of the time transferred political office but constitutionally protected white economic privileges and minority rights. In Democratisation in South Africa: The Elusive Social Contract, political scientist Timothy Sisk noted that the arrangement explicitly traded power-sharing for safeguarding existing wealth hierarchies, thereby fundamentally limiting transformation. Democratisation occurred, but decolonisation did not. Economically, the betrayal was clear. The ANC abandoned its highly questionable redistributive vision, as outlined in the Freedom Charter, especially nationalisation, under intense pressure. Yet the Freedom Charter itself reflected another form of elite pact-making, as it lacked genuine popular input. Its declaration that 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it' overlooked the material realities of landlessness, dispossession, and exploitation endured by the black majority. Dissenters like Anton Lembede, the radical founder of the ANC Youth League, rejected such liberal universalism and sought a mass-based, African-centred struggle rooted in material demands, rather than legalistic petitioning. Pre-negotiation meetings, such as the 1985 Lusaka encounter between ANC exiles and white business, foreshadowed the neoliberal shift. Jo-Ansie van Wyk explains how an explicit 'elite bargain' emerged: the ANC's political power in exchange for maintaining the capitalist status quo. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was quickly discarded. Its replacement, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy, enshrined market fundamentalism: privatisation, deregulation and fiscal austerity. This mirrored the NP's own 1993 National Economic Model, revealing profound continuity. International financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as domestic white capital, heavily influenced this dramatic ideological U-turn, prioritising investor confidence over mass upliftment. The economic foundations of apartheid remained disturbingly intact. Black Economic Empowerment, purportedly designed to deracialise capitalism, evolved into 'elite circulation'. A politically connected black minority gained access to ownership stakes and government tenders, joining rather than dismantling the existing economic oligarchy. Dale McKinley aptly describes this as a 'two-headed parasite', enriching connected elites while the black majority continued to suffer. Affirmative Action policies, introduced to address historical workplace discrimination, did open doors for a segment of the black population in skilled professions and management. This led to the emergence of the 'Black Diamonds', a visible, affluent black middle class. While significant for individual mobility, these gains often benefited those already positioned to seize opportunities, creating a stratified black society rather than broad-based economic upliftment. As beneficiaries of elite pact-making, Black Diamonds reflect the tragic evolution of the Black Englishmen of the early 20th century. Their lifestyles mirror white consumption while their politics maintain the status quo. Many are disconnected from township and rural realities, reproducing the very inequalities their predecessors sought to dismantle. This insulated black elite has become both beneficiary and buffer of post-apartheid exclusion. Genuine asset redistribution and the transfer of productive capacity were sidelined. The outcome was a disastrous failure of the promised 'double transition'. Political democracy flourished in appearance, but economic inclusion came to a halt. Wealth inequality worsened. By 2022, the top 10% owned over 85% of wealth, with racialised patterns continuing. Unemployment skyrocketed, especially among black youth. Land reform made little progress. The structural exclusion created by apartheid was replicated, not dismantled, under the new regime. This elite pact-making produces what Thomas Carothers diagnosed as 'feckless pluralism'. Vibrant elections and a laudable constitution mask a system where real power resides with interconnected economic and political elites. Post-1994, grassroots movements and trade unions, the engines of apartheid's downfall, were systematically marginalised or co-opted into elite power-sharing arrangements, through the ANC/SACP/Cosatu tripartite alliance. Decision-making is centralised within party structures, substituting elite consensus for popular participation. The state's potential as a development engine was hampered by its adherence to market orthodoxy and the safeguarding of historically accumulated privilege. Public services declined, affecting black townships and rural areas most severely. The social wage promised by liberation rhetoric failed to be realised on a large scale, unable to address deep-rooted inequalities. The core principle of the pact — stability through elite accommodation — actively obstructed transformative state action. The ANC's 2024 electoral collapse, resulting in its loss of majority, led to the formation of a new GNU. Presented as 'stability' and 'national interest', it eerily reflects the dynamics of the 1994 pact. The ANC partnered with the DA, the main defender of white capital interests, explicitly excluding parties advocating radical economic change, such as the EFF and MKP. That is not to say the latter is least interested in ascending to the exclusive elite club that runs the 'new' South Africa. This new GNU, like its predecessor, was imposed without meaningful public consultation. Its stated priorities — 'economic growth', 'investor confidence', 'fiscal discipline' — directly echo the Gear-era mantra, signalling continuity over change. DA demands focus on protecting existing economic structures and constraining state intervention, rather than redistribution. Land reform and national health insurance face renewed opposition. Furthermore, the GNU embodies self-preservation. DA leader Helen Zille's swift pledge to shield President Ramaphosa from accountability over the Phala Phala scandal clearly illustrates its core function: protecting elite interests across the political divide. Once again, the pact serves the powerful, not the populace. It prioritises managing the status quo over transforming it. Thirty years after apartheid's formal end, elite pact-making continues to be South Africa's core governance process. The 2024 GNU is not unusual, but the latest version of a system formed in the Codesa backrooms. It aligns with Frantz Fanon's insightful warning in The Wretched of the Earth: post-colonial elites often become a 'new bureaucratic aristocracy', perpetuating exclusion under new banners. Liberation remains sadly limited to the ballot box. The DA, backed by settler capital and a rhetoric of colour-blind liberalism, has long resisted redistribution. That the ANC — founded to resist white settler unity — now governs in alliance with it, is a bitter historical irony. As the DA's foreign policy posture shows, white privilege continues to shape South Africa's role in the world, often against the interests of the black majority. Yet resistance has not vanished. Movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Amadiba Crisis Committee, and landless rural women's networks are reviving mass-based, participatory politics outside elite pacts. Their democratic imaginations challenge both the procedural limits of electoralism and the material violence of dispossession. A different future remains possible. But it requires rupturing elite continuity, rejecting symbolic inclusion and forging a mass, redistributive democracy where dignity is not aspirational, but lived. Siyayibanga le economy! * Siyabonga Hadebe is an independent commentator based in Geneva on socio-economic, political and global matters. ** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL. Get the real story on the go: Follow the Sunday Independent on WhatsApp.
TimesLIVE
19 hours ago
- TimesLIVE
'I'm a new chief whip': MK Party's Makhubele plays down 'yes' vote blunder in Appropriation Bill
MK Party chief whip Colleen Makhubele has played down confusion about the Appropriation Bill in parliament where she mistakenly voted 'yes' for the bill the party maintained it would reject. During the budget vote on Wednesday, Makhubele announced the party was voting in favour of the bill, claiming 49 votes in support. However, after the house chair asked her to verify, she did a swift U-turn, declaring they were voting against the bill. Makhubele said she thought they were voting for the ad hoc committee to investigate the allegations by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi. 'We are rejecting this. We are changing our vote. I thought we were dealing with the ad hoc committee. We will support it when it comes, that was the confusion,' Makhubele said. 'I'm just a new chief whip, I will make errors, so relax. We are voting against the bill.' Makhubele, who was appointed chief whip last month replacing Mzwanele Manyi, faced severe backlash from other MPs who mocked her in parliament. EFF leader Julius Malema criticised Makhubele's blunder during a media briefing on Thursday. 'It was a mess, a mess in action,' Malema said. 'That's what you elected South Africa. You are asked twice and you're saying, 'I'm voting in support'. That MK Party caucus almost collapsed yesterday [Wednesday]. You elect people who do not understand. The chairperson allows that. It's not principled. Once the voting is closed it's done. He undermined the decorum and the integrity of that process. MK Party will never reduce us in numbers anywhere else including in thinking.' The National Assembly approved the Appropriation Bill by 262 votes to 90. All 10 parties in the government of national unity voted in favour, while the MK Party, EFF, African Transformation Movement, United Africans Transformation and National Coloured Congress opposed the bill.
IOL News
a day ago
- IOL News
MK Party's budget vote confusion in National Assembly
MK Party chief whip Colleen Makhubele blamed their initial support for the Budget to mistaking the vote for the Ad Hoc Committee that will probe the allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi. Image: Ayanda Ndamane / Independent Newspapers Drama played out during the adoption of the Budget in the National Assembly this week when the MK Party supported the Appropriation Bill only to change its vote despite rejecting every departmental budget. The party's chief whip Colleen Makhubele blamed the confusion on mistakenly casting their vote for the Ad Hoc Committee that was established to probe allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi during the marathon session. The unexpected vote of the official opposition unfolded soon after all the 42 schedules were agreed to. House chairperson Cedric Frolick had asked the National Assembly Secretary to read the Fifth Order, which was the next to be considered on the agenda after the schedule of vote of department. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Frolick then immediately corrected himself that it was going to be the time for Fourth Order, which was meant to agree on the Appropriation Bill after consultation with the officials. The EFF was the first to object and called for the division, a move that led to Makhubele accusing Frolick of not recognising her hand first. When the voting took place, the ANC voted in favour with 140 votes, followed by the support of the DA with 74 in support and then MK Party supporting with 49. The EFF voted against with 35. When Frolick asked Makhubele to clarify her party's vote, she said: '49 in support.' ACDP chief whip Steven Swart suggested that there might be confusion on which item that was being dealt. In response, Frolick said he had been explicit that they were dealing with the Fourth Order. 'I followed the procedure and the EFF was the last one to indicate and now I am with the IFP,' he said. Voting by other parties continued with the Patriotic Alliance. Its chief whip Marlon Daniels said his party 'follows the lead of MK Party with eight votes in support'. After the voting session had closed, Makhubele stated that she had mistakenly thought that they were dealing with the Ad Hoc Committee. 'We are changing our vote. We will support the Ad Hoc committee when it comes. That was confusion,' Makhubele added. Frolick agreed that there was confusion in terms of the MK Party's vote. 'The party has now changed the vote three times. What is your final position?' he enquired. In response Makhubele said: 'I am just a new chief. I will make errors so relax. We are voting against this.' DA chief whip George Michalakis said the parliamentary rules did not provide once the voting has closed for parties to change their vote. 'That will be highly irregular to allow parties to change their vote once a vote has closed,' Michalakis said. But, Frolick blamed the confusion on the disorderly conduct that was taking place in the House. 'I called the member on more than one occasion to vote in a particular manner.' He then announced the results that the Second Reading of the Appropriation bill was agreed to with 256 in favour and the MK Party's votes included among the 87 that voted against. 'No abstention and the Second Reading is agreed to,' Frolick said, adding the bill was to be sent to the national Council of Provinces for concurrence. He maintained that even if there was a rerun of the vote, it would not make a material difference on the outcome. Frolick stood his ground when EFF leader Julius Malema maintained that he made a bad judgement because he set a wrong precedent. 'You ruled in our favour but that was not in line. You are making this process to have a problem of legitimacy and credibility. This has to be the most respected process that you don't make the mistake,' said Malema, referring to Frolick when he overruled the MK Party when it was outsmarted by the EFF earlier in objecting and calling for division on the schedule of all the votes. Frolick was unmoved, saying there would no material difference to outcome of the vote. 'The majority voted in support of the Second Reading,' he said. Cape Times
