EFF leader Julius Malema says there’s still a lot to be done for the youth in South Africa to be “happy”, if the president is not ready to tackle many of the challenges facing South Africa. They will not comply with Covid-19 lockdown.
Malema said the youth was drowning in misery, faced by many challenges that the government was failing to tackle.
Malema was speaking outside Uitsig High School in Centurion, Tshwane, where a pupil was allegedly assaulted for wearing EFF regalia for the school’s Career Day on 4 June.
It later emerged, after enquiries made by News24 to the Gauteng Department of Education, that the student was on a seven-day suspension and had violated the school’s code of conduct by coming to school.
Despite this coming to light, on Wednesday, the EFF members showed up in their numbers at the school to commemorate the June 16 Soweto youth uprising.
Malema said:
The unemployed youth of South Africa needs jobs. Lockdown level 3 will not give them jobs. Gatherings will not give them jobs. What will give them jobs is a vaccine and the opening of a country. So that they can go hunting [for jobs]. We are excluded from the economy.
The party slammed President Cyril Ramaphosa for not being clear on the vaccination rollout programme. He said it was concerning that the government still hadn’t prioritized essential workers to be vaccinated.
“Police are not vaccinated. There’s no plan to vaccinate teachers who deal with millions of children everyday. Frontline workers, those people are in danger.
The nurses, the doctors and all those who work in hospitals those who were told they are a priority till today they are still struggling to vaccinate,” he said.
Malema said the party would not listen to what Ramaphosa had to say, nor adhere to the lockdown restrictions that were imposed under lockdown Level 3.
On Tuesday, Ramaphosa announced new restrictions that would be imposed as the country moved to Level 3, which included controlling the number of people who attend indoor and outdoor gatherings.
He said they would no longer listen to anything Ramaphosa had to say about the virus or comply with any of the government’s imposed lockdown regulations “until he gives us vaccines”.
Malema said it would confront the government head-on, as the party believed it was turning a blind eye to issues faced by the country.
The EFF said it would march to the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority on Friday to raise its concerns. Malema said, if they did not get a response from the regulatory authority, they would stage sleep-ins at the home of the organization’s CEO.
“It is personal like that. There will be sleep-ins there until vaccine is provided by the government.”
A total of 2 310,082 345 million people have been vaccinated globally, so far.