Entertainment Africa
While everyone was busy celebrating the life and legacy of South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela on Tuesday, Peter Keetse decided to present something weird to the anti-apartheid hero.
Right at the feet of the Nelson Mandela statue in Sandton City, Keetse placed about 30 rats – some dead‚ some alive.
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Who’s Peter Keetse?
Keetse is the president of the Economic Freedom Fighters Student Command (EFFSC). He was elected to the position on July 17 by the EFF student command.
He was the spokesperson of the command at the time ANCYL president Maine Collen said the league will not allow “Julius Malema and his monkeys to run our country amok and turn this country into a banana republic.” Maine made the statement in February 2016.
Keetse publicly challenged Maine for likening them to monkeys, an image he said, “has become a substitute” for the k-word.
“The EFFSC will personally pay a visit to Oros so that we may have a guerrilla conversation with him on matters including but not limited to FeesMustFall‚ RhodesMustFall‚ EndOutSourcing and other genuine black struggles because through his clumsy utterances it is clear that he fails to grasp what is really going on. The discourse has left him and his friends of the youth desk behind,” he said at the time.
When Peter Keetse was approached to explain why he placed the rats at Mandela’s feet, he said he did it for the people of Alexandra whose poor living conditions are very alarming.
He further explained:
“We have long diagnosed issues of the people of Alexandra. There was once incident that happened where a child was eaten by rats. The story was there but nothing was done for the people of Alexander and their conditions.
They [people] have said here is the man who is celebrated internationally and when you check just next door [in neighbouring Alexandra] the situation is worse than it was in 1994. It is deteriorating each and every day. Nothing is being done with that condition. It is always about the question of land.
Those people there are just thrown as if it is a concentration camp…They [people of Alexandra] can just come and trim trees and flowers in Sandton and go back there where they are going to share the groceries with rats. It is very bad.
We have said as Alex we are going to take this initiative and go to Mandela Square… and deliver a present to the old man.”
Keetse lamented that conditions in Alex are still the same. He slammed Mandela and ANC leaders for “selling us out” on the question of land during the Codesa negotiations.
At the Mandela Statue square, a group of young people held a demonstration. Some of the rats escaped into Mandela Square after they were released.
