/ 9 August 2013

PAC: Malema stealing our values

EFF leader Julius Malema is stealing the values that the PAC stands for, acting PAC president Alton Mpheti has warned.

"The way Julius Malema is portraying himself gives us a problem because he is stealing what we have stood for as a party," Mphethi told delegates on Friday at the Pan Africanist Congress's two-day conference in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.

"It is interesting that he is now the one advancing our policies after he called us 'ghosts'. We want to remind him that the PAC is the one championing these policies."

He said opportunism was the reason for the formation of new political parties and that these parties lacked proper political grounding.

There was a proliferation of political parties and very few had any political foundation, said Mpheti.

The progressive organisations were sinking.

"The social conditions of our people are such that they live in hopelessness.

"They do not know what is hitting them. They cannot identify their real enemy. They consequently are in conflict with one another… blaming one another, rather than the real cause of their pain," he said.

Mpheti conceded that his party was not visible enough and that this was the reason why parties such as Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters had taken the political limelight.

"We have placed ourselves underground and do not go to the people to talk to them.

"We have the motivation to stand up, spurred by the fact that many of our people died for… the struggle but we do not use that motivation.

"Those who died for the cause are not here anymore and what are we doing to cover their space?"

In a statement on Thursday, the PAC said it was expecting its expelled president Letlapa Mphahlele to appeal his expulsion from the party.

Mphahlele did not attend the conference.

The party's national executive council (NEC) expelled him in May for financial impropriety, bringing the party into disrepute and failure to raise its profile.

The High Court in Johannesburg later nullified this decision. The NEC is appealing the ruling.

Mphahlele said the PAC's conference was nothing but "a clown's kangaroo court".