Dear Comrade Marshall

We thank you for the letter inviting our movement to participate in the multiparty forum that includes civil society organisations which aim to hold the President accountable. Black First Land First (BLF) agrees with the sentiment that President Ramaphosa must be held accountable. We agree with your assertion around the moral decay of our society that runs up to the conduct of the Head of State.

We are a revolutionary movement which believes that the fundamental contradiction in our country is white supremacy which is articulated in the economic sphere as white monopoly capitalism. This central contradiction gives rise to multiple secondary contradictions which include corruption and black on black violence and divisions amongst black people. Guided by Black Consciousness we identify the Democratic Alliance (DA) as the representative of the ruling class which represents the primary contradiction. The DA is a party of land thieves and we labour to take back the land from its constituency. The DA is the representative of our historical enemy and therefore we cannot collaborate with it under any circumstances.

We blacks have to maintain a principled position if we are serious about liberating our people. We cannot practise the politics of collaboration with the enemy. This is a principled position developed over centuries of struggles of blacks and is reflected in the guiding policy of BLF titled “The Black Code on sell-outs”. The code guides us in executing the struggle to be able to maintain a focus on the primary contradiction and never to elevate secondary contradictions to the primary contradiction.

Being guided by the philosophy of Black Consciousness operationalised into “The Black Code on sell-outs” it’s simply not possible for our movement to collaborate with the political representatives of the enemy. We keep a steadfast focus on who the enemy is and the objectives of the struggle. We can’t enter into any tactical alliance with the party of the oppressor class that still has our land and wealth.

We hope in due course our collective efforts can be guided by a clear ideological orientation which shall maximise the principled unity of the oppressed and landless towards attaining our total liberation in the aftermath of the defeat of the enemy.

We thank you for the invitation. However, we aren’t able to participate for the ideological reasons outlined herein.

Issued by Black First Land First, National Coordinating Committee (NCC)
30 August 2022

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Black First Land First Mail:
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Gandhi Baai
(Secretary General)
Cell: +27 73 565 8420
Mail: [email protected]

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