WATCH: EFF wants Rupert land: Malema leads march to tycoon’s headquarters
MASS: Protest in Stellenbosch. Picture: Henk Kruger African News Agency (ANA)
Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters braved the cold and rain to march to tycoon Johann Rupert’s HQ in Stellenbosch on Wednesday.
About 500 EFF supporters marked the apartheid-era Jan Van Riebeeck Day with a “Land Day” picket near the billionaire’s wine farm as well as his Remgro offices.
The EFF says the consequences of Van Riebeeck’s arrival in South Africa in 1652 are still being felt by black people.
At 1pm, Malema arrived on a field at the corner of Soqukala Street and Koelenhof Road and led the marchers to Remgro amid a heavy police presence.
At the cul de sac, there was a truck with a platform where he addressed his followers.
“More than 300 years ago they arrived here and they took our land, they killed our forefathers and they raped our mothers, they stole the cattle and now they have settled here and they call this place their place,” he said.
“Johann Rupert and his family, the Oppenheimers and many of these rich white families in South Africa, they are the faces of the land theft that was committed in this country and that is why we are here to say to Rupert: your riches come out of stealing from black people and from their exploitation.
“Our people work in the wine farms and instead of paying them, you give them bottles of wine because you have no regard for black people or their dignity.
“So you are not rich because you are smarter than us but because your forefathers committed a black genocide and stole our cattle, killed our leaders and took everything that belongs to us, including the sea and the minerals.
“And we demand that all of those be returned to the rightful owners who are here today to confront the white monopoly capital.”
Monica Hickman from Remgro came out and accepted a memorandum from the EFF that demands land be given back to the black people.
Malema added: “When the programme of the land expropriations begins it will start here in Stellenbosch and we will reclaim our land.”
EFF Spokesperson Sinawo Thambo says their Deputy President Floyd Shivambu led another march at Rupert’s Leopard Creek Golf Estate in Mpumalanga.
“This was just to put him on notice that we are aware where our assets are, where our land is and we are going to come for him when the day comes.
“And the next step now is to take our land by any means necessary.”
Rupert, whose net worth is nearly R140 billion according to Forbes, also owns the L’Ormarins Wine Estate in Franschhoek.
Business Insider recently reported that he lost nearly R20 billion when Russia invaded Ukraine and global markets were disrupted.