(7 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Johannesburg, South Africa – 7 June 2024
1. Various of Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) leadership singing on stage after party talks
2. Various of EFF members singing and dancing in a hall after party talks
3. Wide of EFF Deputy President Floyd Shivambu during news briefing
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Floyd Shivambu, EFF Deputy President:
“We are not going to form part of any government with the Democratic Alliance. We’re not going to sit alongside the Democratic Alliance and Freedom Front Plus in government as the Economic Freedom Fighters. And we are not desperate for positions in government. We’re not going to do everything in our power, so that was appointed into cabinet or we become speakers of Parliament and all of those things. We’re not going to.”
5. Wide of news briefing
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Floyd Shivambu, EFF Deputy President:
“If the ANC wants to choose that route, they can go ahead and do what they did in 1994. And we know what are the consequences of what happened in 1994. Black people and Africans in particular, remain on the margins of economic participation in South Africa. Black people more or less stay in the same spaces that they lived under when Apartheid had segregated black people to inferior spaces. It’s still a lived reality.”
7. Mid of Shivambu during news briefing
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Floyd Shivambu, EFF Deputy President:
“And we said that we are government in waiting, we were not just in an organisation that is protesting and just complaining. We’re an organisation that has to take political power, take over the state, govern on behalf of the people of South Africa.”
9. Various of EFF members singing and dancing in a hall after party talks
STORYLINE:
South African opposition parties were meeting Friday and will continue crunch talks into next week to consider the ruling African National Congress’ offer to become part of a government of national unity.
ANC failed to secure a majority in last week’s hotly contested election, but some opposition parties are already rejecting the party’s offer because of deep-seated divisions.
Shortly after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that he was seeking to form a government of national unity, the leader of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters, or EFF, party took to X to reject the proposal.
After talks on Friday, EFF Deputy President Floyd Shivambu seemed to echo that sentiment, saying he refused to sit in government alongside the biggest opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA).
"We are not desperate for positions in government. We’re not going to do everything in our power, so that was appointed into cabinet or we become speakers of Parliament and all of those things," he added.
The EFF is among the top five parties after the election with just over 9% of the national vote, having declined from the 11% it garnered in 2019 but is expected to form a crucial part of the eventual outcome of the negotiations.
Senior officials from the DA will meet on Monday to discuss the centrist party’s approach to the negotiations.
In 2023, DA declared the Economic Freedom Fighters as its No. 1 enemy.
Parties are under pressure to conclude negotiations and reach an agreement by June 16, because South Africa’s constitution requires them to do so within 14 days after the declaration of the election results.
Most of the opposition parties don’t differ only with the ANC on various socioeconomic policies, but are also at extreme odds with each other on economic policies like land redistribution and affirmative action.
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