‘Northern Cape is rich in minerals but the people live as if they’re in a desert’, says Malema

Economic Freedom Fighters leader (EFF) Julius Malema addressed party members ahead of the third provincial people’s assembly in Northern Cape on Friday.  

The conference is a gathering of duly elected delegates, who will deliberate on the term of the outgoing leadership, and conditions confronting the organisation in the province after the election of new leadership.

Malema explained the significance of having the gathering in the province. He said that Northern Cape is rich with unrealised potential and this conference is a catalyst in changing that.

“The Northern Cape is a strategic province to the fundamental agenda of the return of the land to our people. The Northern Cape is rich with potential but abandoned by those who view our people as voting cows.

“It is a province rich with Uranium, Manganese, Iron Ore, Zinc and Copper, yet our people in Northern Cape live as if they are in a desert,” said Malema.

He highlighted that despite having white-owned mines in the province, regular people remain poor and forgotten.

“The minerals found in this province contribute to the white minority, yet the indigenous people of this land have nothing to show for it. The mining cartel here enjoys the fruit of and minerals of Africa’s wealth without making any contribution to the lives of our people.”

He added that the conference must formulate a plan and strategy on how to develop the province and improve the lives of “ordinary Joes’.

“This conference must therefore make as a priority, a concrete programme of action on how we intend to return the means of production to our people, and this begins by ensuring that the mines in this province develop this province.”

“Therefore, the Northern Cape is unique in that sense, because beneath our feet, in the soil which is red because of the blood spilled in the wars of dispossession.”

“There is an appetite for the EFF in the Northern Cape and we must begin to take our organisation to the people, in order for us to gain the necessary strength to change the inhumane conditions they live in,” he said.

He added that all of this could only be attained through organisational discipline.

The conference will take place until Sunday at the Thabo Moorosi Multi-purpose Centre, Mothibistad.

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The EFF will hold its Northern Cape Provincial Peoples’ Assembly (PPA), in order to reflect on the term of the outgoing leadership, prevailing political conditions in the province and to elect leadership of the Province.#EFFProvincialPeoplesAssembly pic.twitter.com/z45la8Ki5n

— Economic Freedom Fighters (@EFFSouthAfrica) September 30, 2022

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