Sihle Linzo
CAPE TOWN - The EFF stance to perform oversight in South African business, in particular, restaurants and the hospitality industry in general, appears to have caught the public by surprise.
The EFF is arguing that the staff composition of South African businesses ought to accommodate a minimum of 50% South African citizens. An ideal which is not uncommon in emerging economies, which not only want to protect their local markets but also their local workforce.
Those who have invested their time and energy in misrepresenting the ideological positions of the EFF have misread this to be a deviation, or as they call it, “flip-flop” from the initial position of the EFF.
It is not a secret that the EFF had taken a very unpopular position on the unity of Africa, even when it was unfashionable to do so.
Those who study political economies across the globe will attest that when a nation faces socio-economic challenges, the first scapegoats are immigrants.
Donald Trump blamed the woes of America on Mexicans. Germany’s far-right populist party, the AfD, is mobilising Germans behind a “zero immigration” policy.
In the UK, Boris Johnson of the Conservative Party, reflecting on the food, petrol and gas crisis, declared that he would not allow “uncontrollable immigration”.
The crude and populist targeting of those who are considered to be “foreigners” has been an easy answer for lazy and gormless leaders to very complex socio-economic problems. South Africa is no different.
With the levels of unemployment rising at an exponential rate, especially among the youth, negative economic growth, rampant corruption and misuse of public funds, the lazy finger of populism lurks and is ready to pin all the problems of South Africa on so-called ‘foreigners’.
The EFF has been the only political organisation in South Africa that has openly denounced this afro-phobic attitude.
The simple and consistent message of the EFF has been that these so-called ‘foreigners’ are not employing themselves.
Why point the finger at vulnerable Africans selling their labour to exploitative business owners?
Put differently, the EFF has been arguing that it is the business owners who drive the divisions between South Africans and their African brothers and sisters.
They prey on the weak to maximise profit.
Let us take the hospitality industry as a simple case study. When a greedy owner approaches a vulnerable Zimbabwean woman, who is yet to get the necessary documentation, he knows that he can pay her anything and treat her in the most inhumane manner.
The greedy capitalist knows that once the woman reports the exploitation, she will be asked to provide her identification and run the risk of deportation.
Contrary to popular belief, therefore, illegal immigration benefits business owners more than it does the immigrants.
Is substituting the nationality which is being exploited putting South Africa first? Is working in the farms, mines and businesses of multinational corporations (MNC) putting South Africa first?
Put differently, the EFF exposes the absurdity of chasing away exploited workers from Africa in a factory that is owned by a European and saying nothing about the owner of the factory who owes his loyalty to his mother continent Europe, not South Africa.
When the EFF says, let us expropriate land and place it in the hands of a sovereign South African government for equitable redistribution, that is the truest application of putting South Africa first.
When the EFF says, let us nationalise the Central Bank, mines and all commanding heights of the economy so that the people of South Africa can participate in the market as owners, not just sellers of cheap labour, that is the truest application of putting South Africa first.
When the EFF advocates for industrialisation and the processing of all our raw materials locally, that is putting South Africa first.
When the EFF rallies society against the privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) like Eskom, SAA, Denel and Transnet, it is saying that the people of South Africa must take ownership of their electricity, aviation, military technologies, and public transportation.
South Africa is at the mercy of multinational corporations, wealthy families and “foreign investors” who have little regard and care for the genuine development of South Africa and its people.
This became glaringly visible in the years of former president Thabo Mbeki.
When asked why his economy, which was growing, was not creating jobs, he reflected that South Africa has abnormal levels of liquidity.
In other words, those who have monopolised the wealth of South Africa were, and still are, reluctant to invest in the economy and people of South Africa.
In very basic terms, liquidity means that these so-called “investors” have a lot of money and cash on hand and have no urgency to industrialise and build factories so as to create jobs.
What we quickly learn from this is that the wealthy families who control the economy have no genuine loyalty to South Africa. This is why many of them are very quick to say that they are leaving whenever things do not go their way.
Therefore, it is much easier to smuggle cash out of South Africa than it is to smuggle factories. They would rather hold liquid assets in the JSE than build a factory because they cannot carry a factory, put it in a private jet, and fly away with it to their mother continent, Europe.
These are the structural questions that should concern the #PutSouthAfricaFirst brigade, not nicknacks and lollipops of Somali-owned shops.
The “foreigners” who must answer are the owners of the banks, mines, restaurants and all commanding heights of the economy.
They are the ones who employ and opportunistically side-line South Africans so that they may maximise profits.
It is for this reason that we have insisted, time and again, that what is happening in South Africa is not xenophobia. Xenophobia can be understood as the hatred, dislike and or fear of people from other countries, “foreigners”.
However, we have never seen Europeans and their many businesses being torched and looted under the guise of #PuttingSouthAfricaFirst. This is because the anger and hatred is only directed at black “foreigners”.
This has been the view of the EFF since it was formed, and it has never changed, nor has it “flip flopped”.
Only small minds view the oversight visits to various businesses and restaurants across the country as an attack on black “foreigners”. This is precisely because the EFF is not concerned with the vulnerable workers but those who employ the workers.
It is for this very reason that these visits, which merely represent the actioning of the long-held beliefs of the EFF, should be seen as the EFF throwing a life jacket to the confused and misdirected anger of the #PutSouthAfricaFirst brigade.
Lonzi, a member and activist of the EFF Students’ Command studies Economics and Philosophy at UCT. He is also a former UCT SRC member for two terms. He writes in his personal capacity.
Cape Times