There has been a great deal of talk on these X streets about Julius Malema and the EFF being “anti-white”. It is a lie.
The EFF is opposed to white supremacy — as it should be, and as any revolutionary party seeking to transform South Africa’s racial and economic order should be. Opposition to white supremacy is not the same thing as hatred of white people.
White South Africans who genuinely believe in the EFF’s seven cardinal pillars are welcomed into the party.
I joined the EFF in 2013. I was the first white woman to join the party, and I was subsequently elected as the EFF’s first Deputy Secretary General in Gauteng.
I attended countless marches, rallies and political meetings. I travelled with EFF comrades and worked alongside them. I was embraced, respected and treated as a comrade. My experience was deeply meaningful, and I felt at home in the organisation.
That is my lived experience. It cannot simply be erased by people who were not there.
People need to stop spreading misinformation about the EFF and white people.
But there is an important responsibility that white people who choose to participate in Black revolutionary politics must understand.
We must not centre ourselves.
Historically, white allies in struggles for racial justice have often been unreliable. Some have also caused unintended damage by overstating their importance, speaking over Black people or assuming that solidarity gives them an understanding of experiences they have not lived.
We cannot know what it means to experience racial humiliation, exclusion and oppression as Black South Africans. We cannot claim to understand Black pain from the inside.
What we can do is stand in solidarity, listen, challenge structural racism and work towards a society in which racial inequality is dismantled, land dispossession is addressed and meaningful reparations are pursued.
For me, one of the most powerful aspects of the EFF has always been its insistence on the dignity, humanity and future of the Black child.
That does not mean hatred of white people.
It means confronting a historical and continuing system in which Black people have been denied dignity, ownership, opportunity and power.
My personal experience as a white person in the EFF was very special. I found comradeship, political clarity and an organisation deeply committed to its political project.
People are entitled to disagree profoundly with the EFF. They are entitled to criticise Julius Malema and the party.
But criticism should be based on what the EFF actually says and does — not on the lazy and demonstrably false claim that opposition to white supremacy is synonymous with hatred of white people.
Those are not the same thing.