The EFF’s Deputy Secretary General, Hlengiwe Mkhalipi, has urged all residents of the North West to follow party leader Julius Malema’s call for a ‘shutdown’ on March 20 to protest the ongoing energy crisis.
Mkhalipi told a first plenum meeting of the EFF in the North West at the Matlosana recreational centre on Sunday afternoon that load shedding has affected many South Africans, with businesses suffering the most.
The EFFs CIC Julius Malema said last week his party was planning a shutdown to show dissatisfaction with the current load shedding status.
The EFF has also called for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s resignation, saying that Ramaphosa has failed to address the energy crisis.
Mkhalipi said that while some individuals are opposed to the shutdown, it is the only approach to address the never-ending load shedding.
“We have to ensure that we shutdown, we can’t live like this, even people who are against EFF for whatever reason are affected by loadshedding,” she said.
Mkhalipi told party members that the EFF planned to register five million new members throughout the country.
She said that North West has a reasonable portion of the five million needed by the organisation, with around 350 000 individuals likely to join, and the people in this region must trust the party to deal with challenges such as the energy crisis.
”I am appealing to every person to look at the bigger picture, small businesses are losing their jobs while the government is failing to provide more employment, so you can’t tell me that you are against the shutdown, it means that you like the status quo that we are faced with,” she said.
One of the invited speakers, the CEO of Black Forum South Africa, advocate Gagoje Morota, said since 1994 politicians have played with political power but they do not know what to do with it
“We cannot talk about the issue of load shedding 30 years later, we cannot talk about the ownership of strategic sectors of the economy 30 years later, what have we been doing in the past 30 years of black power.
