uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK Party) says it will launch a programme to counter Afriforum and Solidarity Movement’s alleged misinformation campaign.
MK Party briefed the media in Johannesburg on Friday and rejected the groups’ agenda vowing to launch a multifaceted counter-campaign.
“uMkhonto Wesizwe raises concerns about the reactionary and racially motivated narratives pushed by groups such as Afroforum and Solidarity. We will launch a robust media campaign including programs like demonstrations, and legal and parliamentary programs to counter attempts at secession and division, such as an attempt to break out the Western Cape province into an independent country. We will not agree to the subdivision of South Africa,” said Secretary General Floyd Shivambu.
“We will not agree for the cessation of even a single inch of South Africa. If anything, we should be working towards integration of the other parts of the African continent into much more viable countries,” said Shivambu.
Shivambu underplayed the tarrifs imposed on South Africa by the US government describing them as “foolish” adding they will only harm the fortunes of the very groups the Donald Trump administration is purporting to be helping.
He also said the tariffs could very well hurt elitists such as Elon Musk who surround Trump.
“So for a very long time, there’s been some relationship with SouthAfrica got to benefit from Agawa, which now is coming to an end because there’s a 50% taxes that are being imposed on South African goods and products. But we need to also, as a political movement, examine just who had been the beneficiaries of the Agawa process (2:04) since enactment in 2000.Largely it has been the automobile industry. So you’ll find these European companies like VW and then the Japanese with Toyota and then the Americans with Ford will come and assemble cars in South Africa so that they can get duty-free access to the Americanmarket. So 80% of the AGOA beneficiaries have been accruing to the oversubsidized automobile (2:31) industry in South Africa.
“And they will just come and assemble cars so that they can gain free access to the American market. And then the second category of that was something called ferroalloy and then agricultural products, plants, and all of those things. So we said it before that in the process of hyper-nationalism and trying to appear everything, Elon Musk is going to affect these people because the people who are benefiting from access to the American market are in commercial agriculture,” he said.
The Solidarity Movement has been widely criticised for its misinformation campaign which alleges among others that white South Africans were being murdered in targeted killings and their farms seized as part of a state sponsored programme, all of which has been proven to be false.
Shivambu said Afriforum’s constituency that is going to suffer from the tariffs.
“And the commercial agriculture in South Africa is 99% white and mostly African. They are the first victims. We can’t say, no, what about workers? Farm workers are treated like slaves.They’re not benefiting anything. There’s no farm worker who is benefiting anything from (3:17) the farm that they’re working in. They’re treated like slaves,“ said Shivambu.