Gayton McKenzie cries ‘sabotage’ as party celebrations flop

Although Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader Gayton McKenzie takes full responsibility for the party’s 10th birthday celebration flop at the Orlando Stadium on Saturday, he, however said there was sabotage.

The party’s celebration trended on social media for all the wrong reasons, from food apparently being stolen to a low turnout.

“I take full responsibility, I am sad for all of you and understand the anger and disappointment,” said McKenzie.

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But the PA was sabotaged, he claimed.

McKenzie claimed the joint operations committee, 20,000 people entered the 25,000-capacity stadium, but were prevented from coming back into the stadium after leaving to get food and drinks.

When the food was delivered they [marshals] ate it and some even took the food off the premises, he said.

“They destroyed a lot of stuff, they had no respect for the PA members and they stole. The first load was 5,000 loaves of bread , they stole water and cold drinks. They stole the T-shirts, so many of them,” said McKenzie.

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“They charged our people R25 to get in. They caused havoc. They blocked people from leaving. People saw them burning thousands and thousands of our T-shirts. If anyone went out to get food, they would have to pay to get back in.

“In Mpumalanga, they booked all the buses. We used a reliable agent. On the day of the event, the buses didn’t rock up to collect Mpumalanga people. In the Northern Cape, they gave us the invoice, we paid, but they said the buses could not leave because the money had not cleared. We have our own buses, but they are not sufficient.

“The worst of the sabotage was, they tried to sell a bottle of water to one of the leaders.

“I have no evidence of who paid them, but I gave them their money because not everyone was guilty.

“I had to cut my speech short because of the fear the mic would die because we didn’t know the extent of the sabotage.

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“When I heard about the sabotage, I didn’t want to start a race war in the stadium because patriots would have overtaken them, and it would have been seen as a race war.”

McKenzie asked his party members for a second chance to “fix this mess” with another “real party” within 90 days.

“We will make it up. I saw some people saying that they’re leaving the PA. For those I wanna say, I understand and apologise, I wish you well and we should have done better.”

The party celebration is also trending after McKenzie said should he reach the highest political office, his party would send over-18s to the army.

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“We’re going to bring National Youth Service. When you reach the age of 18, you will go to the army and learn a skill. You will not be paid R350 to sit at home and act like there is something wrong with you,” he said.