Ramaphosa and ANC are coming for your pensions, Maimane claims

Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane spoke at a Worker’s Day rally the party held in Cape Town on Wednesday, warning an audience of supporters that Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC were allegedly “coming for” the pensions of South Africans.

The DA leader was referring to the idea of prescribed investments for pension funds, which has been hinted at by the ANC in its 2019 election manifesto.

Explaining prescribed investments during a presentation, economist Mike Schussler said the government would be able to dictate to fund managers where and how much of their assets to invest. This money could be used to bail out crippled state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

According to Schussler, this could lead to workers’ hard-earned pensions ultimately being squandered. Maimane expressed the same sentiment at the rally, at Hillsong Church in Century City.

READ MORE: ANC’s plans ‘could collapse pension funds, with pensioners dying poor’

“What the ANC and Cyril Ramaphosa mean by ‘prescribed assets’ is that they are planning to force us to invest our pensions in these failing state-owned enterprises.

“Due to their own failures in government, they are now looking to make laws that force the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) and private pension funds to use our pensions to keep these entities going, so that they can mask their failures and keep stealing. This is the policy of Cyril Ramaphosa and his ANC,” Maimane said.

The DA leader estimated that the ANC has “stolen R1.2 trillion through corruption”, warning his audience that he believes the party “will not stop now”.

“They have shown that there is nothing they won’t stoop to,” he said.

Maimane’s full address can be read here.

WATCH: Maimane explains what he’d say if Ramaphosa hadn’t ‘chickened out’

The event also served as a campaign for the DA’s Cape Town premier candidate Alan Winde, who also spoke at the event, as did former DA leader and outgoing Western Cape premier Helen Zille, whose speech served as an endorsement for Winde.

Zille credited Winde with having played a significant role in job creation in the Western Cape and described him and his team as “brilliant”.

Winde’s speech, meanwhile, focused mainly on the possibility of an EFF-ANC coalition, which he wanted to ensure didn’t have a chance to replace the DA’s Western Cape government.

The premier candidate painted a bleak picture of what he believed the province would be like if the ANC and EFF gained enough votes to join forces there, which he said would lead to clean governance and service delivery being compromised as well as investment and jobs drying up.

(Additional reporting, Sipho Mabena)

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