Kaunda Selisho

By Kaunda Selisho

Journalist


WATCH: Mngxitama says when you vote EFF, you’re voting for the DA

The BLF leader believes that election campaigns are blocking voters' ability to think for themselves and ask critical questions.


Speaking during a pre-election press conference held by his party on Wednesday, Black First land First (BLF) leader Andile Mngxitama once again had a lot to say about his opponents.

Chief among these is the Economic Freedom Fighters and their leader, Julius Malema.

In what is arguably his strongest statement about them in this particular briefing, Mngxitama said voting for the EFF was as good as voting for the Democratic Alliance (DA).

“Our people are bamboozled by marketing gimmicks into unthinking voters. You wake up, it’s a poster, every pole… Everywhere you go, you are bombarded by ‘vote for me’ with these red colours of money that has been sourced from white monopoly capital,” said Mngxitama.

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“So our people are being forced not to think and not to ask questions. It is just a question of having to vote. They do not ask questions such as ‘if I vote for EFF, am I voting for the DA?’ Because last time you black people gave your vote to the EFF and immediately Julius gave those votes to the DA,” he added.

“So when you vote for EFF, you’re voting for the DA!” exclaimed Mngxitama.

He went on to compare his party’s campaign budget to that of the EFF, which he says spent R200,000 on posters alone as compared to the BLF’s smaller budget which can only get them R20,000 worth of posters.

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Mngxitama believes that making parties campaign on that difference alone does not make the elections “free and fair.”

He also addressed his party’s ongoing battle with the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) which recently lodged an appeal with the electoral commission to stop the BLF from contesting elections.

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The BLF leader went on to address a range of issues including Thabo Mbeki’s return to the campaign trail, his perceived attack on former president Jacob Zuma and his party’s ongoing battle with the Freedom Front Plus.

Among the FF+’s many qualms with the party is their strong and very vocal stance against allowing white people into the party.

According to Mngxitama,  BLF’s exclusion of white people from its party is not exclusion for the purposes of oppression, it’s exclusion for redress.

He labelled BLF’s decision to not allow white people to join the party as “positive discrimination.”

During his briefing, the BLF leader also touched on the recent strikes in Alexandra and offered his solutions to the problems faced by residents of the area.

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He concluded by declaring that he and his party would be visiting the Inanda Country Club and the Afrikaner-only Northern Cape settlement of Orania among many other venues in an effort to seek redress.

Inanda club is a ‘secret society’ where Rupert holds meetings – Mngxitama

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