As thousands of EFF marchers arrived in Sandton on Tuesday afternoon, the party’s leader Julius Malema had harsh words for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) after a fence was erected at the entrance of its building. By Thomas Hartleb, Lizeka Tandwa and Ahmed Areff, News24 Agency
“You are so racist, you do not even belong to South Africa,” he said.
“You lock us here [when] we got permission to come here. You treat us like criminals because we are black.”
He asked police outside the JSE why they allowed “these whites” to treat them like that when the party had permission to be there.
Malema said black people at the SA Reserve Bank, where the EFF marched to earlier, had received them well.
“We come to white people here and we are treated like visitors in our own country.
“We may look ugly to you, we may look poor to you, but we want to be treated with respect,” Malema shouted at the group of people looking down at the EFF marchers from the JSE building.
“We are here because of the pain of poverty.”
JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King received a memorandum from the EFF on the back of a truck from where Malema and other EFF leaders were addressing the crowd.
She thanked the crowd for “taking the effort to come to Sandton”. She called it a “magnificent effort”.
Referring to issues raised in the memorandum, she said the JSE looked forward to discussing them with the EFF leadership.
EFF MP Floyd Shivambu then read the memorandum out to the crowd.
Some of the demands included that all JSE-listed companies give 51% ownership to their workers, that JSE-listed companies each adopt at least 100 students and pay for their tertiary education, and that labour brokers be banned.
The EFF demanded that the minimum wage for domestic workers be R4 500 per month, R12 500 for miners and R6 500 for manufacturing workers.
They also wanted an end to companies shifting their profits overseas.
“We want all companies to give us a response within 30 days, otherwise we are going to shut down these companies, the JSE itself.”- News24
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