Ramaphosa must tell Magashule to stop ‘blaming the white people’ – FF+

On the red carpet ahead of Cyril Ramaphosa’s June 20 State of the Nation Address (Sona), Freedom Front Plus (FF+) leader Pieter Groenewald told an interviewer from news channel Open News that he hopes the president issues a clear call to stop blaming white people for the country’s woes.

“Part of the constitutional obligation of the president is to ensure nation building in South Africa, so I want the president to quite clearly say, stop this narrative of blaming the white people for everything that is going wrong in South Africa,” he said.

As an example he brought up ANC secretary general Ace Magashule.

“Even the secretary general of the ANC about two weeks ago had only to say that because of white monopoly capital we have these problems in the country,” he said.

“I said it in each and every state of the nation of the president. We want to build South Africa. We are willing to build South Africa … and ensure we have a future in which everybody can prosper without looking through a matter of race,” he continued.

READ MORE: FF+ has come close to tripling results, we’re happy – Groenewald

The interviewer then asked what Groenewald would say to someone who suggests his party does not want to acknowledge South Africa’s race-based past and asks how South Africans can build together if there isn’t an acknowledgment of what we have gone through “and to a large extent still are”.

“It’s wrong to say that we don’t acknowledge, history is history, we cannot change that,” was his reply.

“But we also say let’s stop trying to build a better past, let’s try build a better future.”

“Even if you look at the Afrikaner as a nation there were some bad legacies,” he continued, citing the concentration camps in which his people were placed by the British during the Anglo-Boer war.

“In each and every country there are in their history certain issues, but we cannot change them so please, we can talk about it, but let’s go forward,” he continued.

The recent elections saw the FF+ nearly tripling in size, and they will now be represented in parliament by 12 MPs, a huge increase from the 4 seats they won previously.

(Compiled by Daniel Friedman)

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