An open letter to the AbaQulusi electorate

Andre Lotter, once Ward 22 councillor at AbaQulusi/Vryheid Municipality, now at Reunion Island, wrote on 14 July 2015:

Dear Voters of Abaqulusi (as well as Nqutu and Mthonjaneni),

I am writing this letter to you firstly to thank you for having come out in great numbers in the May 2014 elections in response to my call published in these pages of the Vryheid Herald in April last year and to have voted for the NFP in far greater numbers than in May 2011. Indeed, despite severe divisions at the time in the NFP in Vryheid, the Abaqulusi municipality saw the biggest increase in the NFP vote nationwide (+38%). Two other municipalities also saw an increase in the NFP vote, namely Mthonjaneni (+30%) and Nqutu (+8%). Unfortunately everywhere else in KZN, the NFP vote dropped, in most places rather steeply. So I hereby salute the NFP voters in Abaqulusi, Nqutu and Mthonjaneni for making the brave choice you did when you voted last year for social renewal and national freedom, as well as voters everywhere else who cast their vote for the NFP.

Secondly, I am writing because articles have recently been published elsewhere that erroneously state that I have left the NFP. Nothing can be farther from the truth. I remain a loyal and devoted member of the NFP and fully committed to serving the interests of all citizens wherever they live in our beautiful country, but firstly with a focus on the poor of all races, the destitute and those suffering owing to a lack of economic opportunities, in particular because of the curse of the rampant unemployment that touches all of our communities nationwide despite 21 years of political freedom.

However, it is true that owing to a recent intensification in the ANC’s persecutions of myself, today one month ago my wife, our baby and I had to flee South Africa and now find ourselves on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, just 3 hours by plane to the east of South Africa. Here we formally applied for French protection as political refugees. We have chosen this location because geographically Reunion is part of Africa (like nearby Madagascar, Mauritius and the Comores Islands), but politically it is part of the European Union and France, the country of human rights. Reunion is much like our Rainbow Nation where people of all races cohabit in peace, harmony and even in unity, but only much more so than in South Africa. No wonder then that this island is called Reunion.

In fact, today, 14 July, over here, everybody celebrates Bastille Day, a French national holiday for the past 226 years, the day on which the prisoners in the Bastille prison in Paris were set free in 1789. It is the day that marked the start of the French revolution, a true revolution (unlike the one the present government in South Africa wants to make us believe they still pursue), a revolution of freedom, equality and brotherhood that swept across Europe in the following years and which, up to today, stands as a beacon of hope to oppressed peoples around the world.

Dear compatriots, today our country is once more threatened by the yoke of oppression. Once more we, the majority of South Africans, are in need of freedom.

We don’t need to look too far for examples of oppression. In Ward 22 of Abaqulusi, over the past 2 years, the SA Police has not progressed one inch with the investigation of the large-scale electoral fraud that I provided irrefutable proof under oath had been committed by the ANC and IFP in full sight of the IEC. The IEC, supposed to be the guarantor of free and fair elections in our country, did nothing to prevent, repress and punish such electoral fraud. That is why the Electoral Court, in response to my application, ordered the IEC to carry out an investigation. As a result of that investigation, the IEC removed over 1800 people from the voters rolls of Ward 22. But since then, has any of them or in particular the political parties that incited them to commit those crimes been brought to book by the Police and our courts? No! Why not? Why not!

The answer to that question seems very obvious to me: it can only be because there is political interference with the SAPS investigation and with our judicial system in general.

When I brought these crimes against our democracy to the attention of the authorities, my life was threatened on several occasions and my car was torched, every time at my home. I then change home and started giving up false addresses. When they were unable to find and kill me, the ANC threatened it would ruin me financially (as they seek to do with Malema). In that way, the ANC wishes to prevent me from ever going to Parliament, where the ANC knows I will be very efficient in representing the poor against the corruption and mismanagement of the ANC. As you know, no sequestrated person may become either a Local Councillor or Member of Parliament. However, the difference between Malema and me is: he has public debts of several millions to repay, whereas some months ago the ANC had me declared bankrupt for a private debt of only about R12.000 and for that reason is now selling off my farms in the Vryheid district. The government is doing this to punish me for having left the corrupt ANC and because it wishes to remove my base in Zululand to cut me off permanently from the people of Zululand.

How did the ANC manage to do this to me? Well, in the same way as they are preventing the truth in Ward 22 of Abaqulusi from coming out, namely by interfering with the judicial system on various levels.

I therefore salute Chief Justice Mogoeng and the group of some 20 judges who are now finally calling President Zuma  to order. Democracy in South Africa can only be guaranteed when the police and judiciary remain independent from political interference.

Thirdly, dear voters, I am writing to inform you of the unfortunate state of matters inside the NFP, where our President, the Honourable Mrs Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi MP, has not been seen by any of the top leaders of the NFP since she suffered a severe stroke on 16 November last year. 8 loooooooong months!

To put it to you shortly and simply: the ANC has hijacked the NFP President! Minister Naledi Pandor of the ANC is the only high-level politician who has direct access to uVZ!

After the elections of May 2014, President kaMagwaza-Msibi offered me a post as administrator and political advisor to her in her office as Deputy Minister of Science & Technology in Pretoria. I was honoured to serve her and our nation and accepted the offer. However, on 16 November 2014, there was an imbizo in Ulundi, organised by the Department of Science & Technology. At the imbizo, the Deputy Minister was given a very secondary role, in the very place where she had been a District Mayor for about 15 years! My President was deeply shocked and emotional. The same evening, she suffered a life-threatening stroke and was paralyzed. Today, 8 months later, with uVZ still not back in public service, it is with sadness that I have to say I believe she will never again be fully fit for political action. It is indeed very rare for persons who have suffered such a severe stroke to ever attain to their former powers. Those who say differently are lying to voters out of self-interest. The 8-month absence speaks for itself.

When I started pressing President Zuma for clarification of the matter 3 months after uVZ’s stroke, the ANC once more started persecuting me intensely in Pretoria. Shortly thereafter President Zuma had me removed illegally from my post in service of the NFP President at the Department of Science & Technology. The ANC then tracked me down and found my latest physical address in Pretoria. My wife started fearing once more that I would die a violent death like my friend, Nicholas Makhosonke Msibi, who had been gunned down in his home in Ulundi some time ago. His killer has still not been found. It is to avoid the same fate that we decided to leave South Africa. With the protection of the French government here on Reunion, our struggle for the national freedom of South Africa will continue.

The reality of the matter is that the NFP will have to move on without uVZ.

Furthermore, the NFP should immediately break our coalition with the ANC. They lie to us. They lie to you. All they want is the NFP to die without a leader, a party that presents a superior alternative to the ANC.

Most of you who voted for the NFP did so because of our President Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi. But we believe you also voted for the national freedom, other democratic values and for the sound economic governance our party stands for, as embodied by the sound management of the Zululand District Municipality under uVZ and its current NFP Mayor. Clearly our party will have to face the future without uVZ. But the NFP will survive this storm thanks to your continued support. With your help, we will emerge from this crisis stronger and better able to serve you.

I therefore hereby appeal to you to continue to support the NFP, to continue to believe in the freedom and equality that were planted on our shores in 1994. Like the NFP, the trees of freedom and equality are still young in our country. But they will grow and will outlive the current storm of oppression that is sweeping across our land in the wake of a party gone power-drunk, a party that now cheats in elections to stay in power and thus no longer respects the will of the people, a party running roughshod over our Constitution and the judicial system, a party that feeds itself first, that has become blind to the needs of you and all other ordinary citizens.

If South Africa survives and emerges stronger and better from the present crisis, it will be because of the faith and character of ordinary people like you, me and all citizens who continue to believe.

Gqina Mzansi !

André Lötter