EFF not concerned about its immigration policy ahead of 2024 polls

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The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) says it is not worried about its immigration policy having a potentially negative impact on its support at the 2024 polls.

The party has been steadfast in advocating for a united Africa and has often come under fire from the electorate for this stance.

Despite EFF leader, Julius Malema raising eyebrows when he inspected shops to observe the foreign-to-local employment ratio at establishments at a mall in Gauteng in 2022, the party has maintained that it is pro-immigration.

However, speaking to SABC News ahead of the party’s election manifesto launch in Durban, its Treasurer-General Omphile Maotwe says the socio-economic ills that bedevil South Africa will not change if immigrants were to be expelled from the country.

Maotwe says, “No, we’re not. We need one Africa. The issue that is a concern to our people is unemployment. Socio-economic conditions that we find ourselves in are the things that make our people believe that a person from Kenya is not a South African or is not an African and they are coming to eat all their jobs.”

“It is not true. We are all Africans, all of us. We were just divided by the apartheid system. Let the ANC close the borders. Let them close them, it’s their policy. Let them close it and let’s see what it’s going to do to unemployment. We’ll still wake up, as South Africans, unemployed.”

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