Orange Democratic Movement Secretary General Edwin Sifuna on Sunday, July 30 wrote to South Africa’s leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Julius Malema over his remarks on Kenya’s opposition chief Raila Odinga.
In his open letter, Senator Sifuna took issue with Malema’s attack on Raila Odinga, asking the veteran politician to allow President William Ruto to deliver his mandate by ending street protests.
“My attention has been drawn to comments by the leader of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters Party, Comrade Julius Malema, asking Kenya’s Azimio Coalition and ODM Party Leader Raila Odinga, to “stop the protests and stop disrupting Kenya,” adding that he would not “allow” Hon. Raila to “disrupt peace in Kenya,” the letter read.
Malema had on Friday, July 29, commented on Kenya’s political stalemate.
“Comrades, we want to make a call in Kenya, especially to comrade Raila Odinga. Stop doing what you are doing. Do not disrupt Kenya, we need peace in Kenya.
President William Ruto was democratically elected in Kenya. I will not allow you to use the people of Kenya to destabilize the peace of Kenya,” Malema stated.
However, Sifuna argued that Comrade Malema, watching, Kenya from a distance, is not familiar with the delicate sociopolitical fault lines in our nation, and makes the faulty assumption that his approach in in fighting injustices in South Africa can be replicated here.
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Furthermore, Senator Sifuna claimed that Kenya is under a dictatorial regime which has been there since time immemorial, a position that was unknown to Malema.
“Kenya is largely a dictatorship falsely basking in the sun of democracy, in which nearly all elections since 2007 have been fraudulent, and where the wrong president has been sworn in each time.
It is hugely different from South Africa’s strong multiparty democracy, where we have witnessed the ruling party even recall presidents and end their terms when they no longer represented the aspirations of South Africans,” Sifuna explained.
Sifuna draws parallels between Azimio and EFF
Moreover, the vocal Senator noted that Malema’s EFF prides itself as a far-left movement for the economic emancipation of South Africans from decades of oppression.
According to the Kenyan politician, EFF has more in common with Azimio Coalition umbrella of the ODM and other parties than with the current far right and oppressive capitalistic regime in Kenya.
He added that if Malema had not been ignorant of what the opposition is fighting for, he would join them if he were in Kenya.
“If Comrade Malema had bothered to look beyond, the Kenya Kwanza regime propaganda, he would know that the recent protests in Kenya were against obscenely high taxes, rising cost of living and government refusal to listen to the people.
I have no doubt that if Malema were Kenyan, his red army would have joined us in their numbers on the streets, like what they recently did in South Africa,” Senator Sifuna said.
At the same time, Senator Sifuna called for Malema’s attention to the history of liberation in Africa, in which when the African National Congress fought the demonic apartheid regime, most of Africa, without equivocation, stood with the liberation heroes of the ANC.
Also Read: Julius Malema Says South Africa Protests to End at Midnight
“As the ODM Party SG, I extend an invitation to Comrade Malema to visit Kenya, so that I can personally take him on a tour of our country, so that he understands that we fight for the same things he does,” the letter read.
