Malls should give spaza shops rent-free spaces, Malema says

Township spaza shop owners should either be given shares or space in township malls, which are bankrupting them, Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema said.
Vgrigas via
Vgrigas via Wikimedia

Malema addressed the annual conference of the South African Property Owners' Association (Sapoa) in Cape Town yesterday, and did not mince his words about what the EFF would like to see from property owners in the future.

"When I was younger, there were many black-owned spaza shops in the townships, but the township shopping malls are putting them out of business," he said.

"They must be given shares in these township malls and every mall should have rent-free space set aside for spaza shops."

He made it clear that the EFF saw itself as the representative of the people without property rather than those he was addressing, and that systemic and lawful reallocation of property was the only way to correct the systemic dispossession characterising colonial wars of conquest and apartheid.

Malema told the sometimes sceptical audience that it was in their interest to support the EFF, which he described as the only true opposition to ANC state looting that would kill the economy which property owners needed to thrive.

"The problem with liberation organisations is that they have nothing more to add after liberation," he said.

"After that, they are out of ideas and expect people to vote for them simply because they liberated them... as we see with the ANC."

The EFF leader ruled out working with the ANC in 2019, saying that the party would only join an opposition coalition if its terms of a state bank, nationalisation, expropriation and free education were met.

Failing that, the EFF would give the opposition its support to at least stop the ANC kleptocracy.

Source: Herald


 
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