Open Letter To Julius Malema From Lonmin Worker
I used to admire you during your " Friends of Youth League" days, you were a champion for workers and people' rights and when you and your colleagues later formed the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in 2013, I thought all my troubles were over and better things were soon to come as you pledged. By then I was still 53 years old with enough faith to see you as nothing short of the workers' messiah.
I was swayed by your party's high sounding founding principles and for the past two (2) years and I have wholeheartedly supported and given my all to EFF's cause only to realize now it was in vain. I watched in awe and bitter disillusionment as you spent one long year in the government busy feathering your nest. You chose to totally forget or ignore us workers yet the formation of your party was premise upon our privileges.
You, Malema and your partners in crime in the democratic government notably Floyd Shivambu as Chief Whip and Dali Mpofu as National Chairperson, literally showed us the middle finger when you were in strategic positions to uplift us workers once and for all. At one time Mpofu even mocked that mine workers should follow him to the loo and see if he excretes money by not allowing to represent us in the Farlam Commission and demanded 100 millions , upon which each affected family never got a cent from it.
Dali Mpofu on the other hand was busy playing hide- and- seek with the mine worker representatives while you Malema, just sat back and enjoyed your teas and lunches at State House with your formerly sworn enemy.
Gone was the firebrand workers' champion I and my colleagues had grown to love dearly and would have gladly laid our lives down for. We watched in horror as you steadily but surely morphed into that which you had so vehemently professed to hate. Like the animals in the Animal Farm, we perceive from pig to man, from man to pig and back and we could not tell the difference.
Thus ended my love, respect and admiration for you Malema as it dawned on me that you were only there for the money, just like the rest of them. We gave you a mandate to be our champion as workers and lift us from the abyss of despair and poverty that we had sunk into. Instead, you chose to use that privileged time to line your pockets and conquer the seas, changing women as you would change underwear's.
My own family struggled to make ends meet while you squandered tax payers' money and time on women. Surely Malema you can fathom my skepticism and disgust when I listened to your address during the 2nd anniversary of your party EFF. Now that the SARS have vacuumed your pockets and your EFF party is burning and on the verge of collapse, you have remembered us the workers.
Do you just want to use us as a front, to use us to do your dirty works so that you obtain another chance at the pampered life of luxury and nothingness that you had gotten used to? I for one am tired and disillusioned. Any hope I once invested in you to liberate me from the bondage of being a worker in South Africa has since been eroded. So in conclusion Malema, let me state equivocally that I shall not be heeding your calls for mass action or such nonsense, I will be too busy finding means to put bread on my family's table.
You should try it sometime instead of moving around with a begging bowl and expecting people to rise enmasse' and fight your personal wars.
Yours In Abject PovertyPoor South African , Mine Worker in Lonmin ( Marikana)