11 April 2014
In the third of three interviews ahead of the May elections, GroundUp asked Veronica Mente, the coordinator of EFF in the Western Cape, some questions.
What will the EFF do about the sanitation problem in the Western Cape?
Mente: The government will provide quality sanitation for all. The EFF will abolish the bucket system within five years. Current buckets undermines people’s dignity. EFF will produce and distribute free sanitary towels to poor women.
What will EFF do about transport problems in Cape Town, especially in the townships?
Mente: The current government is taking away business from the taxi drivers. They introduced the MyCiti bus which caters mostly for white and middle class people; it doesn’t cater for black people. Now, they want to bring the MyCiti bus to the townships, how many MyCiti buses will transport the whole of Khayelitsha?
Government should subsidise the taxi industry so that the taxis can be in good condition and Metrorail should provide more trains in the townships.
What will EFF do about the housing problem in Cape Town?
Mente: We want to give people decent houses. People are given tenders and instead of building proper houses they look for profits. We want to eradicate the housing problem in South Africa, not only in Cape Town.
We are looking at getting land in order to build houses for the people. EFF believes that houses should have a big bathroom, they must be tiled and properly painted. There is no shortage of land in South Africa. There is land that belongs to people who are not even using it. We are going to change that.
Veronica Mente. Photo courtesy of Veronica Mente.
What will EFF do about the crime issue in Cape Town?
Mente: We have identified the causes of crime. A child who is brought up by a single parent with a minimum wage lacks many things. This child grows up and doesn’t get a job, gets frustrated and starts smoking cigarettes and goes from there to dagga and drugs. These habits cost, so the child robs people.
There should be free education in South Africa from grade R to university. And the state should make jobs available for the people.
What will EFF do about the hungry people in South Africa?
Mente: The ANC did a good job in maintaining the social grants system, but they have allocated too little money for it. We are going to double the money. The cost of living is too high and the grant money is not enough. People have doctors’ expenses and have to pay for education and food. We are going to make sure that people have access to grants.
Where will EFF get the finance to make sure all of the above happens?
Mente: There is so much money in South Africa. Look at how much is spent at parliament for just drinks; its more than R1 million a quarter. What kind of drinks do they drink? We are going to get the money by stripping off all the unnecessary benefits the parliamentarians get. Why should an MP get a house from the state, yet other public servants like the police don’t? Even their medical aid is too much and they are civil servants. They live for free, they only use their money to buy clothes. So we are going to take most of the money from parliament and give it to people who deserve it.
How will you help the Marikana settlement in Philippi?
Mente: The land in Marikana needs to be nationalised. Jan van Riebeeck, when he first came to the Cape, didn’t bring land, so there is no land that belongs to white people. What is happening to those people [in Marikana settlement] is unconstitutional, it reminds me of the apartheid Group Areas Act.
We as EFF want to find residential alternatives for the people, but we believe that the land belongs to those people.
Where do you think most of your voters will come from?
Mente: EFF was born from the ANC. Most EFF members are from the ANC but we were not happy so we left. The ANC did not live up to the Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko legacy. EFF is giving people an alternative party to vote for. People left the DA for the EFF because they are frustrated and left the ANC because they hate corruption.
We are also going to get votes from those who have been thinking about not voting. Now they will vote for us.
There is a perception that EFF is mainly for Gauteng and Limpopo. Is that true?
Mente: EFF lives and breathes in the Western Cape everywhere. People also think that EFF is for black people and it’s not, we do have white followers.
We are aware that most white people are renting and they too need housing solutions from the government. They are also working and paying tax so they need basic services from government equal to black people.
What do you think EFF can offer voters in the Western Cape?
Mente: First, we are going to include the Khoisan people in our constitution because we think those people are not recognised. And we are going to nationalise their language by having it as one of the official languages in South Africa.
We are going to eliminate drug abuse in the Western Cape by providing necessary programmes.
Cape Town needs to nationalise the fishing industry. The fishing laws are restricting the coloured community. Rich people have the upper hand and that is not right.