Ex-EFF treasurer Magdalene Moonsamy slams EFF for ‘selling out’

Former treasurer of the EFF Magdalene Moonsamy has come out to criticise the party for the voting the DA into power after the local government elections.

Speaking to Jacaranda FM on on Monday morning, Moonsamy asked to how voting for the DA had benefited the Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay metros. The EFF chose to give its votes to the DA in the 2016 local government elections, a move that saw the ANC being removed from all three metros for the first time since the dawn of democracy in 1994.

Jacaranda ran with a headline that the EFF had “sold out”, in Moonsamy’s opinion.

She labelled Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba’s controversial comments against foreign nationals “deliberate crucifixion of what the unification of African people is all about”.

“How do you engage the entire mass base and convince them … convince them that this is our decision … let’s own it? What has it yielded? In Tshwane right now there’s crisis. In Johannesburg there’s crisis.

“What has voting with the DA yielded for the black people of Tshwane or Johannesburg? I just want someone to give me a simple answer. There’s chaos. The mayor of Johannesburg says that people are criminals. [He] refers to immigrants  which, in the main, we know that they come from the continent, as criminals. And this is … it’s a dire attack … it’s a deliberate crucifixion of what the unification of African people is all about.”

The former EFF member of parliament (MP) resigned as an MP to complete her articles in law in January 2015, and was replaced by Vuyokazi Khethabahle in parliament.

She is far from the first former MP to criticise the EFF for its move to vote for the DA, a party that critics allege looks primarily after the interests of white people. Black First Land First (BLF) leader Andile Mngxitama, also a former EFF MP, has been at the forefront in criticising the EFF for voting for the DA.

Mngxitama alleges that the EFF’s decision to vote for the DA was influenced by Lord Robin Renwick from London after the party had a meeting with him.

EFF leaders, however, have defended their choice by saying that they never went into a coalition with the DA, but were merely choosing the “better devil” to rule the metros, with the worse devil being the ANC.

They have rubbished claims of selling out or making a deal with Renwick, while EFF leader Julius Malema continues to refer to the DA as a “racist party”.