Lesufi speaks out against racism

Gauteng MEC for Education, Panyaza Lesufi, has spoken out about Wednesdays’ racial attack against him. He says he would rather be called all sorts of names than to sit and not act against the injustices of the past in South Africa.

Public outrage is building over an effigy of Lesufi which was hung on a tree outside the Basic Education Department in Pretoria on Wednesday.

The events followed several threats made to him and his family, since the ANC-led government’s decision to change the language policy at certain schools in the province from Afrikaans-only to parallel medium.

Lesufi says he is not moved. “I’ve been a target since day one I took office; people have done all sorts of things that are un-printed. People have said things that I can’t say. Non-racialism is the future, you can’t stop it, there is no way. And if we thought it will ABCD to sort this out we were wrong. We knew, people will sacrifice, people will die and be victimised and all those things. So I am excited that I have some principals who believe about the future that we talking about.”

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has condemned the incident. Spokesperson, Sixolise Gcilishe says racism will never be tolerated in this country.

She says this notion of white people thinking they are superior over black people needs to come to an end. Gcilishe says transformation of Afrikaans Schools by government is vial in order for all citizens of South Africa to prosper and thus create a peaceful environment as a rainbow nation.

She says they have also noted with concern, the threats levelled against Lesufi calling on law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for criminal acts in this matter.

“The Economic Freedom Fighters condemns the racist actions by white people who go around threatening black public servants while exercising their constitutional charged mandate, they must meet the full might of the law and they must stop threatening black people with impunity.”

The Pan Africanist Congress has called on government and law enforcement agencies to act swiftly in making sure that cases of racism are a thing of the past in South Africa. Spokesperson, Kenneth Mokgatlhe, says more needs to be done to address the injustices of the past.

He says acts of racism are an embarrassment to the country as they display an attack to black South Africans. “We see this not only as an attack to Panyaza Lesufi as an individual or the ANC. This is an attack to the general African population and we are saying to government the only way to solve this is to re-distribute wealth of the economy to African majority because our economy does not include the African majority.” Click below for more on the story: