EFF calls for integrated plan to deal with housing crisis

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has called for an integrated plan to deal with the housing crisis in the country.

Speaking to the SABC in an exclusive interview on the party’s manifesto that was launched last month, party leader, Julius Malema said the EFF would convert some buildings in Sandton to house the poor if it won the Joburg Metro in the November 1 Local Government Elections.

Malema says the current status quo is an extension of the spatial planning of the apartheid government.

“There must always be, and that’s what should be the policy of South Africa, integrated human settlement. There shouldn’t be a settlement for the poor and settlement for the rich. Because you know what it means when it says settlement for the poor, it means black and settlement for the rich, it means white.”

“Then we are perpetuating the spatial development programme of apartheid which is of diving our people on the basis of colour but now you’re not using the colour, you use money to continue the same thing of colour division. So we will take buildings in Sandton, convert them into affordable housing, into low-income housing, into free housing for our people,” he adds.

Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe

Malema also says the party supports Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe for the position of the next Chief Justice.

Hlophe is among eight nominees selected by members of the public for the position.

In 2008, Constitutional Court Justices Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta said Hlophe had personally tried to convince them to give judgments in favour of then President Jacob Zuma on two cases that implicated him in corruption.

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently called for public nominations for the position that becomes vacant on October 11.

SABC News political editor Mzwandile Mbeje speaks one-on-one with Malema: