Mine, Bank Nationalization Critics Offer No Alternative, ANC’s Malema Says
Critics of a call by the African National Congress Youth League to nationalize South African mines and banks are full of “hot air” and offer no alternatives to the agenda for “real economic transformation,” said Julius Malema, the League’s president.
“All we hear from all these forces is that they are opposed to nationalization of mines and expropriation without compensation. They have no alternatives and proposals on how the country moves forward,” Malema said in an e-mailed statement today.
Comments by businesses that the nationalization debate threatens investment and jobs in the country amount to intimidation, Malema said.
At a national meeting last month, the League called for “economic freedom fighters to intensify the battle for total economic, social and political emancipation of the black majority,” Malema said.
Included in the organization’s “program for economic freedom” is a call to put in place legislative mechanisms that “empower the state to expropriate without compensation for public interest,” Malema said.
The ANC Youth League will talk to businesses and organized labor in the next few weeks about its plans to nationalize mines and banks, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lauren van der Westhuizen at at lvanderwesth@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net.
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