By Dylan Bettencourt
- Just 300 MK supporters marched through Johannesburg city to back police boss Mkhwanazi despite the party asking for lots of people.
- War chants and struggle songs played across the mostly empty streets of Johannesburg city on Monday.
Gauteng has given the MK Party a big slap in the face as just 300 instead of thousands of people showed up for their march.
Billed as a shutdown march to support KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the protest turned into a damp squib.
The Johannesburg protest was expected to be a forerunner to a big shutdown protest planned for Friday at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
But since President Cyril Ramaphosa has not suspended or fired General Mchunu, the MK march failed like others planned around the country.
Leading the tiny group were old men and women in military gear clothes, which the MK party claims to be the real veterans of the ANC’s uMkhonto weSizwe.
The rest of the marchers wore special MK t-shirts with “hands off Mkhwanazi” written on them.
MK Party Gauteng spokesperson Abel Tau tried to make the poor showing sound good, saying now is not the time to sit on the fence.
“If we don’t stand up as citizens of this country now and take the chance to put a clear line between us and those who are against society, it will never come again a chance like that,” he told the media.
The march was meant to support Mkhwanazi after he made claims that Police Minister Senzo Mchunu messed with investigations into political killings.
Mchunu has since been kicked out by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who put Prof Firoz Cachalia as acting minister and set up a commission to investigate.
Tau said the revelations by Mkhwanazi proved “that this country has been taken over, not only by white capital for its own interest, but also by criminal elements.”
Jacob Zuma’s party is planning another march on Friday, hoping to take their anger to the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
Though popular in KZN, the MK party has been struggling to establish itself in Gauteng and has failed to win any wards in municipal by-elections in the province.
With Gauteng as the economic hub and the most populous province, the MK’s failure to have structures in the province could support claims that it is merely a KZN party with little influence in other regions.
Pictured above: Jacob Zuma.
Image source: File
