Rise Mzansi’s Songezo Zibi says SA needs new leaders

Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi has promised thousands of his supporters that his party had a plan to make the criminal justice work by reducing the murder rate within three years. 

Zibi was speaking at the party’s final rally at the Ruimsig Stadium in Roodepoort, Gauteng, and told his supporters that SA needed new leaders.

“The experts tell us this [reducing murder rate] is absolutely doable, with the right policies, and the right leadership of the SAPS. Let’s chuck out the cronies, the ineffectual, the corrupt. Let’s put the clean and efficient ones in,” Zibi said on Sunday. 

Zibi said the party also would enable mothers to learn skills, find work and earn an income, and “their communities will have fully equipped day care and ECD [early childhood development] centres staffed by trained people from within the community. We have a real and workable plan to make government employment available to all people, and not just those under 35.”

In addition, he said the party had a plan to make the economy work to provide jobs to millions of people. 

He said they would do this by raising R300bn in three years through a wealth tax and setting up a national growth fund that will repair the ailing infrastructure and create jobs at the same time.

“This is nothing less than a New Deal for SA, and we all know that we need it. We are certain that, with the right political leadership, everyone will come on board,” he said. 

The party would also ensure access to clean water and sanitation. 

“I come here today not as a prophet of doom, like some leaders who talk about a ‘doomsday coalition’. I stand here as a messenger of hope. I know we can do it, and I’m here to tell you how we can begin to walk along this road together: towards the transformation that was promised in 1994 but never delivered.”

Zibi said he was getting ready to vote on May 29, however, he had a mixture of sadness and excitement.

“I am deeply sad that 30 years into democracy we are very far from our promised land. Actually, I’m not just sad. I’m angry too. I am angry at the way the promise has been broken.

“At the way the dream of the freedom and equality and dignity of democracy has been deferred because of the way the old leaders from the old parties have squandered the mandate we have given them. The way they have broken our trust.”

Zibi said his party's objective was to turn the fears of South Africans into hope and transformation. 

“We are not entitled to your vote, but we ask you with a great commitment to serve you. We ask you to send the representatives you have chosen to parliament so that they can show you what it means to be new leaders with values.” 

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