Economic Freedom Fighters(EFF) Julius Malema says his party will continue to fight for expropriation of land without compensation.
Addressing a crowd at the EFF Land Reclamation Day at Sophiatown Extreme Park, Johannesburg, Malema said the “fight for land” started in 1652.
“We are here to claim the land which was stolen from our ancestors. We are here to finish the work of those who were displaced silent and buried. We are hear to take the land back, without fear of compensation,” he said.
Julius Malema said 1652 was not the beginning of history in South Africa but that of dispossession.
“The 6th of April 1652, Fighters, is the year the European colonial project began on the southern tip of Africa. It is not the beginning of history. It is the beginning of dispossession,” he said.
Julius Malema says “Dutch settlers” forced natives off their land
“In that year, Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape, sent by the Dutch East India Company. He did not come as a tourist. He did not come as a refugee. He came as an agent of European imperialism: to secure land, labour, and resources to sustain the Dutch Empire’s maritime trade. He came to build a refreshment station for ships traveling between Europe and Asia, but what started as a trading post quickly turned into a colony,” the eff leader said.
Malema said the Khoi and San people were forced off their land by Dutch settlers.
“Within years, the Dutch settlers were no longer just merchants. They were landowners, and not by negotiation or invitation, but through encroachment. They pushed the Khoi and San people off their ancestral grazing lands. They erected fences. They brought disease. They killed, raped, enslaved, and dispossessed,” he told the crowd.
Julius Malema said his party rejected the Expropriation Bill signed earlier this year. The former ANC Youth League leader maintains that the EFF would continue to fight for land.
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