Riyaz Patel
The EFF student command (SC) has hit back at party leader Julius Malema, who suggested they were useless during a press conference Thursday.
In a strongly worded statement, the student body said there appears to be moves to dissolve the body at the party’s national people’s assembly (NPA) next month.
Party leader Malema fell just short of saying the EFF SC may be done away with during the conference scheduled for December 13-16 at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg.
Malema added: “They have less than 15% of branches across campuses and they are waiting for the mother body to launch branches. If they cannot launch branches, then what is the point of the student command?”
But, the EFF SC say, this will not be allowed to happen. The students said any attempt to dissolve the wing had nothing to do with their “competency” but was motivated by sinister reasons.
The SC said in a statement they were under attack because they did not subscribe to “blind following.”
“We have an intelligent, informed, politically active and educated membership. That is what allows us to correctly carry out the aspirations of the dejected masses.
“We have received the confidence of students nationally and we have established a revolutionary machine that is responsible for organising workers under the banner of ending labour brokering,” said EFF SC national spokesman Xola Mehlomakhulu.
Mlungisi Madonsela and Kensani Maseko are former leaders of the EFF SC who died. Madonsela was shot dead earlier this year during a protest at the Durban University of Technology while Maseko, who studied at Rhodes University, committed suicide last year.
Malema had also suggested that some EFF SC members were being bankrolled by some leaders of the mother body ahead of the NPA.
The EFF SC said they will go to the NPA to fight for their continued existence and were “confident we will come out as strong as we have come in.”
