Riyaz Patel
ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule has described the ongoing spate of violent protests in parts of the country as criminality and not xenophobia.
Speaking at a SA Students Congress (Sasco) elections rally at the Tshwane University of Technology, he warned that “anti-revolutionaries” were using tribalism to pit Africans against one another.
In his address, punctuated with rapturous applause, he cautioned South Africans against turning on their fellow African brothers and sisters.
“You are South Africans but remember, you are Africans, living in a continent called Africa. Never despise people who have the same skin colour [as] us,” Magashule said.
He also questioned why the idea of a “foreigner” never applied to white people.
“There are many others with a whitish colour. You don’t know them. They are there. You see them all the time but you can’t say this one ke le kwerekwere,” Magashule said, using the derogatory term for African foreign nationals.
“They have never been attacked because they are also so-called foreigners but because their colour is white,” he added as students applauded.
Magashule said that once the continent united and solidified its relationship with other Brics countries, such as Russia, India, China and Brazil, it would mean standing up on their own and never having to go ask for an International Monetary Fund bailout or having to “beg the USA.”
“Imperialist forces, racist forces, fascist forces don’t want Africa united,” Magashule said.
