EFF intensifies fight to dismantle Orania after failed talks

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in the Northern Cape is pushing ahead with its planned march to Premier Dr. Zamani Saul’s offices later this month to raise their dissatisfaction about the existence of Orania in the province.

A meeting between the EFF, the Orania Movement, and Freedom Front Plus on Friday failed to reach consensus. The EFF is calling for a review of the government’s stance on the self-determination of Orania.

The party says Black people and White people should be able to live alongside each other while preserving and observing their cultures.

The Orania Movement, together with the FFPlus, met with the EFF’s provincial leadership. This after the EFF had vowed to push the provincial and national governments to reconsider its position on the existence of Orania and that it should be discontinued.

After lengthy discussions, the EFF said they did not find common ground.

“The EFF is raising a profound fundamental issue that needs both Black and White people to speak to it because they agreed that there should be a generation that will engage and speak about their existence to make sure that we don’t speak past each other. Secondly, we are taking our march and continuing with our march to the premier’s office, demanding what we have said, and that will continue. Orania should be abolished, and Orania is not what we should appreciate and accept as the EFF,” says EFF Provincial Chairperson Shadrack Tlhaole.

The meeting ended in a stalemate. Both the FFPlus and the Orania Movement say more engagements are needed.

“Didn’t agree on everything, which one would have expected, but it’s very good to hear the different perspectives. I think we both learned from each other, and going forward we are all together in the province and in the country, and sometimes they say politics is a nice way of conducting welfare, but it’s actually a way of preventing welfare, and that’s exactly what we conducted, politics today,” says FFPlus Provincial Leader Wynand Boshoff.

“I expect quite a long way of engagements. We are quite a distance apart, but we have had those points of contact and the possibility to discuss, and although it’s a long way and the differences are big and far apart. It does not exclude the possibility of formulating a position that, in fact, recognizes the logic of what Orania is doing as well as what the EFF is striving towards; there may be a way of reaching an agreement on how South Africa could accommodate such differences,” says Carel Boshoff, who is an Orania community representative.

The EFF march is scheduled for the 22nd of this month. The EFF also says there will be more engagements with the FF Plus and the Orania Movement in the future, until they find each other.