PIETERMARITZBURG, KwaZulu-Natal — Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema has intensified his party’s November Local Government Elections campaign, delivering a blistering address to supporters in Pietermaritzburg that sharply criticized President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Government of National Unity (GNU).
Addressing a crowd of party ground forces, Malema focused heavily on the country’s severe unemployment crisis. He demanded the immediate termination of public sector workers who secured positions purely through ANC political connections. Highlighting the plight of unemployed graduates within the EFF’s youth command, he argued that the government lacks any viable strategy for job creation. Malema dismissed the recent deportation of Zimbabwean nationals as a political diversion, noting that unemployment figures continued to rise despite the border crackdowns. Instead, he pointed to collapsing industries and shuttered factories under the ANC and GNU as the true culprits behind the jobless crisis.
To reverse this economic decline, Malema insisted that South Africa must be transformed into a massive “construction site,” with new infrastructure and industries visible in every direction. He used this vision to lambaste President Ramaphosa, questioning when the head of state last inaugurated a new road, school, or 24-hour clinic by cutting a ribbon. Malema characterized the president as a “useless” figure who sits at the top doing nothing, entirely failing to deliver basic developmental milestones.
The rhetoric grew intensely personal as Malema drew a provocative parallel between Ramaphosa and the late Colombian drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar. While children in the Eastern Cape are reportedly dying and being buried due to extreme hunger and poverty, Malema alleged the president is hoarding illicit wealth. He claimed state money is being stuffed under mattresses and sofas until rooms are completely full, forcing the hoarder to move cash into kitchens, dining rooms, and lounges. Just as Escobar famously buried dollars in the ground, Malema accused Ramaphosa of eventually needing to dig holes in eGoli to hide his overflowing cash.
Malema contrasted this alleged elite greed with the dire reality of ordinary citizens, noting that the president remains the “richest” while the public lacks proper housing and school meals. He described a collapsing health sector where hospitals lack medicine and beds, forcing pregnant women to deliver on floors and place their newborns in cardboard boxes.
Concluding his address on policy, the EFF leader tackled the cost of living by targeting Eskom’s profit-driven model. He argued that providing electricity is a fundamental human right rather than a commercial enterprise, insisting the power utility should only generate enough to sustain its operations before offering affordable tariffs to the public.
Malema framed expensive electricity as a modern mechanism of racial and economic exclusion. He explained that while the apartheid regime denied Black South Africans access to the grid entirely, the current system uses prohibitive pricing to achieve the exact same exclusionary result. Vowing that only the EFF can dismantle this corrupt system, Malema promised to redirect stolen state funds directly into job creation and affordable basic services for the marginalized.
