The Economic Freedom Fighters have vowed to stage a repeat of their disruption of past openings of Parliament when President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers his fourth State
of the Nation address on
Thursday.
The EFF famously caused havoc with several of former president Jacob Zuma’s SONAs, heckling him to “pay back the money” spent on refurbishing his private Nkandla home at taxpayers’ expense.
The party is now taking aim at Ramaphosa over the state of the economy, but making Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan the scapegoat for some of the crises the administration faces, and demanding he be fired before Thursday.
The EFF says: “If the State of the Nation address is to be peaceful, Ramaphosa must do the honourable thing and fire Pravin Gordhan. This is now long overdue, accountability means there must be political consequences to incompetence.”
The far-left party, the second biggest in opposition, accused Gordhan of worsening the Eskom crisis, pushing parastatals into private hands and causing job losses in the process, as well as overseeing a campaign against black executives at state-owned enterprises.
SCAPEGOAT: Pravin Gordhan
“Gordhan must go before he runs down all the assets of the state and the people of SA.
"Most painfully, under his watch black executives in key state institutions are being vilified, projected as incompetent and corrupt, then replaced with racial minorities, which is the greatest statement of no confidence in African leadership.
“We will therefore march to the public enterprises offices in Pretoria to demand Pravin Gordhan to resign,” the EFF leadership said.
They added that Gordhan was “incompetent and seemingly untouchable”.