Social grant payments such as child support, pensions and disability would more than double under an EFF government.
This is according to EFF leader Julius Malema, who was delivering the red berets’ electoral manifesto at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on Saturday.
Malema said the child support grant would increase from R510 to R1,020 a month, and pensions from R2,090 to R4,180. But Malema did not explain how his government would finance the increases. Taxpayers are already paying more than R22bn a month towards social grants.
On the economic front, Malema said an EFF government would look to Africa, Russia and China for improved trade. It would also recommission coal power stations and bring nuclear energy on to the grid to curb load-shedding.
“At the centre of our job creation strategy is reindustrialisation, using state funding and not relying on the private sector. We don’t need the world to reindustrialise, we must expand our trading with Africa.
“Those companies [in South Africa] from Britain, America and Europe can leave with immediate effect, we will get companies from Africa, from Russia, from China — we will rebuild this economy,” he said.
Top of the EFF’s plan, according to Malema, is a decentralised economy and incentives for businesses operating in areas outside economic hubs such as Gauteng.
“Those [businesses] opening factories and creating jobs outside economic hubs like Gauteng will get tax incentives and their factories will be subsidised if they open, especially in rural areas, because we want production of goods.”
He added that factories producing items for everyday use, including for the agricultural sector, would be protected by the state against foreign markets under an EFF government.
Malema said an end to load-shedding, which he claimed is possible under an EFF government, will contribute 9-million jobs.
“Through industrialisation we can create jobs, but not with load-shedding, therefore the government of the EFF is committing to end load-shedding within six months in government because we know it is possible.
“We have assembled a group of engineers who are waiting for the EFF to take over, they will be integrated into Eskom to make sure that we provide reliable electricity,” he explained.
How this would be possible, he said, is through reactivating all coal power stations and operating them to full capacity, while “introducing more than 600 megawatts of nuclear energy and a nonnegotiable maintenance plan for all coal power stations”.
“These will ensure that we secure electricity generation and supply for the next 20 years without load-shedding, using our coal to the maximum in addition to other sources,” he added.
Malema said his party is committed to expropriating land without compensation to end the “economic apartheid” that “replaced” apartheid after 1994. “When we get the majority we will amend the constitution for land expropriation without compensation, 50% of the land will be redistributed before 2025.”
Despite South Africa having been democratic for 30 years, the EFF believes the political inclusion has hardly translated into observable economic benefits for the majority of the people who had been oppressed and exploited under colonialism-cum-apartheid.
“Black people remain landless, they remain on the margins of economic production and outside life-enhancing economic participation.
“The majority of those that participate in the economy do so as suppliers of cheap and easily disposable labour. Landlessness and joblessness among black South Africans are at crisis levels, posing the biggest challenges that confront South African society today,” said Malema.
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