By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Umkhonto weSizwe Party leader Jacob Zuma told his supporters in Mamelodi that the African National Congress (ANC) has become a shadow of its former self.
Zuma delivered the lecture at Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu Square in Mamelodi West on Sunday, 27 April.
Zuma’s programme on Freedom Day began with a visit to the Khosi Mampuru Correctional Facility in Pretoria, where the young freedom fighter Solomon Mahlangu was held after his capture, arrest, and subsequent sentencing to death in March 1977.
He had met Mahlangu personally when he was stationed in Mozambique and dealt with many exiles, including Mahlangu, who arrived in that country seeking military training in the wake of the 1976 Soweto student uprising.
He also visited the Mamelodi Cemetery, where Mahlangu is buried, and later told those gathered for the lecture that Mahlangu, who was just 23 when he was hanged in 1979, was exceptional in his commitment to the liberation of South Africa’s black people.
It is this quest for liberation, he said, that the MK party has taken up after its realisation that the ANC has failed to restore the dignity and human rights of the majority of citizens.
Zuma said the current ANC is not the one they knew in the past. He said the ANC is totally dead. “MK Party must lead South Africa.
Zuma urged those in attendance to mobilise ahead of next year’s local government elections to ensure a two-thirds majority for the party so as to enable it to change the material conditions of the poor and downtrodden.
MK Party (MKP) secretary-general Floyd Shivambu called for Godongwana’s immediate resignation, accusing him of attempting to maul the working class and poor people with the VAT hike.
“He must step down with immediate effect. We cannot continue to be led by people who do not have ideas on what to do with this country.”
Meanwhile the party has scored another political victory in eThekwini following a clean sweep in the Student Representative Council elections that took place in TVET colleges on Friday.
The party’s student wing, Umkhonto weSizwe Student Movement won all the seats in Swinton college in Lamontville township south of Durban. The party defeated both ANC-aligned South African Student Congress and EFF student command. The party also won all the seats in As Salaam campus in Umzinto in the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal.