KZN opposition parties say national shutdown highlighted EFF’s lack of support

While the EFF maintains its national shutdown protests on Monday were a success, opposition parties in KZN say the protests only highlighted EFF’s lack of support.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) said its protests across the country, calling for the end to load shedding and the immediate resignation of “imperialist puppet” President Cyril Ramaphosa, were not only successful, but were not marked by a single incident of violence despite the massive “fear-mongering” by the state.

The EFF based its success on the fact that little to no damage was done to businesses and infrastructure and that load shedding was suspended.

The most damage was actually done by trigger-happy police and the state itself, which has needlessly spent R166 562 058 on a month-long deployment of the army. Yet another testament to the success of the national shutdown is that Eskom was able to suspend load shedding due to lower-than-anticipated demand for electricity,.
The EFF commended all disciplined ground forces for executing the programme with the utmost diligence and “serving humble pie” to those who regard black people as hooligans who have no propensity to express themselves peacefully.

Protests across the country were led by the party’s heads and, in Durban, secretary-general Marshall Dlamini was the commander.

Meanwhile, opposition parties in KZN are of the view that the EFF’s shutdown amounted to nothing more than a “political blunder”, which was stillborn, and clearly proved that the party doesn’t have the support they claim to have.

Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance in KwaZulu-Natal, Dean Macpherson, said what was of encouragement to the DA was that the vast majority of citizens rejected the EFF’s “thuggery” and threats.

What should concern us all is how the ANC and eThekwini mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda, maintain a coalition with a politically bankrupt party like this, that threatens to shut down our city because they can’t win at the ballot box.

ActionSA provincial chairperson, Zwakele Mncwango, said the EFF raised important and valid issues, but missed the mark on what approach to use to demonstrate its frustrations.

He said a protest was not the same as a shutdown, as the latter plainly infringed on other people’s human rights.

Look at how much the country had to spend on security just for their shutdown. I also don’t think they were genuinely calling for president Ramaphosa to resign because they are still willing to go into coalitions with the ANC in major metros like eThekwini.

If the intention was to affect the economy, maybe they were successful to an extent as some businesses closed and workers refrained from going to work.

African National Congress provincial spokesperson, Mafika Mndebele, called the shutdown “an election campaign that failed”.

The ANC in KZN is of the view that the programme was a disaster. I travelled around KZN on Tuesday. I did not see one red T-shirt. As the ANC, we commend our people. We should instead be working together to fix our economy and any issues the country faces.

Out of fear, businesses closed yesterday, which is a loss in our economy. We lost money in the deployment of the police and SANDF.

Inkatha Freedom Party spokesperson in eThekwini, Mdu Nkosi, said Monday’s shutdown had little to no impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.

People still went to work if their workplaces were open. I also saw many informal traders on the streets, which gave me confidence that people were still able to put food on their tables.

We thank the law enforcement for playing their part in ensuring that the people were safe.
According to a statement released by NatJoints yesterday, more than 550 protesters were arrested for, among other things, public violence, intimidation, damage to critical infrastructure, theft and attempted looting.

Law enforcement officials also confiscated over 24 000 tyres that were strategically placed to commit acts of criminality.

Townhill CPF

The chairperson of the Townhill Community Policing Forum in Pietermaritzburg, James Martin, told The Witness the shutdown gave citizens an opportunity to see “our strength as a community”.

We mobilised a week before and had a string of meetings. We were confident that we had done enough work to ensure that our neighbourhood was safe. Fortunately, we had no incidents of violence or damage to infrastructure.

Martin also commended the taxi association South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) for getting onto the streets early to ensure that any tyres that were blocking the roads were moved.