South Africa’s opposition leader Julius Malema on Thursday heaped blame of the current violent xenophobic attacks and protests that have pitted African migrants against their hosts on the country’s white population.
Briefing the media, the outspoken Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader said his party would not be part of the protests which he said were clearly criminal, adding that the ongoing allegations that foreigners were stealing jobs from South Africans were ill-informed.
Instead, the firebrand politician blamed the country’s white population and its economic stranglehold on the country for creating animosity among Africans, which, he said, have led to the current unrest.
“There is no one who takes a job from South Africans — nobody. They [foreigners] are being offered the jobs. They don’t take the jobs from anyone. The owners of means of production are white people. When you say private sector, it’s a polite way of saying ‘white people’,” Malema said.
He added: “There is no government that employs foreign nationals. It is the private sector. Simply put, it is white people who prefer foreign nationals over South Africans.
“And after employing the foreign nationals, they (whites) come to you and say, ‘See? Don’t you think these borders are too open? And allowing these foreigners to take jobs from you and as a result you, South Africans, don’t have jobs.’ That’s what they say to us.”
He said white people in South Africa employed foreign nationals at their restaurants, farms and retail shops.
Malema said that this was their way of planting self-hate and discord among the country’s black people.
“And because we’re unemployed, and because we’ve got a government with no solutions to the crises of poverty and widening gap between the rich and the poor, we begin to start believing like that. So the private sector, the white monopoly capital, must take full responsibility for this mess we are faced with,” Malema said.
NM/jn/APA