Afrika Mayibuye Movement National Spokesperson Hlumelo Biko photo supplied
The Africa Mayibuye Movement was officially launched as a political party this past Friday in Midrand and Tshwane Talks took the opportunity to throw a few policy-related questions at its National Spokesperson Hlumelo Biko, who is the son of the late Black Consciousness adherent Steve Biko.
Q1: What is Afrika Mayibuye Movement’s stance regarding the presence of foreigners who are said to be taking job opportunities from South Africans and why have you adopted such a stance?
A1:The Afrika Mayibuye Movement does not support undocumented immigration. Undocumented immigration undermines national sovereignty, economic stability and social cohesion.
In opposing undocumented immigration, we will never align with those who seek to deny other people access to basic needs. Nor those seeking to kill or harm some foreigners simply because our state has failed to enforce its own laws. We will however advocate for the criminalisation of employers who employ undocumented immigrants.
Q2: What is Mayibuye’s stance regarding the tender system that has caused so much corruption?
A2: Mayibuye is fighting for total economic freedom and emancipation now. We seek cultural freedom and decolonisation; capable and developmental state led by a caring and responsive government.
Q3:What is your party’s stance regarding the slow pace of prosecuting State Capture perpetrators? Or does Mayibuye not believe that there was State Capture?
A3: There have been multiple forms of state capture and the first was the Dutch East Indian Company, the second was by the British Monarchy, the next was in the form of Apartheid-sponsored Afrikaaner empowerment programme. Investigations of State Capture against the Guptas merely seek to find out how the family managed to corrupt politicians on their way to wrestling some very small areas of the economy away from imperialist multinationals from the West.
This Gupta investigation is one-dimensional as it does not include the aforesaid forms of State Capture but concentrates only on the Guptas.
Q4: As Mayibuye will be contesting local government elections, what is it that the party will bring about which other parties have failed to bring about at Municipality level?
A4: We want to address the major cause of dysfunction at Municipal level, which is the dwindling power held by elected officials. Power has been outsourced to special interests.
These are individuals who have been placed at the helm of municipal service providers and they have captured municipalities and have rendered public representatives to be mere figure heads. Mayibuye will also be the only party where leaders at every level of local government have to live in their respective constituencies.
Q5: How many members does the party have?
A5: Though we have had more than 150 000 volunteers during our consultation process, we have elected to start our membership recruitment drive from scratch as of the 5th of September.
Q6:When will the national elective conference of the party be held? Or does the party not believe in elective conferences because they are divisive?
A6: We have used a rigorous deliberative democracy to create provincial, regional and branch structures in all corners of South Africa. Two thousand delegates will be sent to our inaugural Afrika Mayibuye National Convention which will be held later in September.
Q7:In practical terms and not in theory, what have your supporters mandated you as Mayibuye to do?
A7: Our National Consultative Process unearthed more than 100 initiatives which include rolling out rural irrigation schemes to small scale farmers to have the much-needed water rights; dealing with a backlog of more than 600 000 assistive devices such as wheelchairs and hearing aids; addressing the inability of local township and rural entrepreneurs to compete with Pakistani, Somali and other foreign-owned spaza shops and getting rid of more than 1800 pit toilets at schools around the country.
Q8: Does your party stand for proportional representation as practiced in the country at the moment or does it support the mooted system whereby constituencies vote directly for the country’s president and MPs?
A8: This will be addressed after our upcoming inaugural Mayibuye Policy Conference.