Malema: ‘There was a period when Bheki Cele was still Bheki Cele, he is old now’

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema has criticised the African National Congress (ANC) government and Police Minister Bheki Cele for the crime in the country.

This in the wake of the shooting of seven people in KwaMashu on Monday.

The men were found under a railway bridge on Monday night with gunshot wounds to the head. According to reports, the men had been living under the bridge and were allegedly involved in crime. Police suspect vigilantism as a motive for the killings.

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Last week, a police officer was killed in a shootout with suspects at a house in Ntuzuma. Four people who were in the house, two men and two women, were fatally wounded. Another police officer also sustained gunshot wounds and was rushed to hospital for immediate medical attention.

According to the police, one of the killed was on the police’s list of most wanted suspects in connection with at least 12 murders, which he allegedly committed from September to date in the Durban North areas. 

At the funeral service of late Warrant Officer Sthembiso Mazibuko at the weekend, Cele said criminals needed to be found and dealt with.

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“Criminals must not be given any oxygen. You must rise and put it to rest. You must go back for answers. There must be no peace for criminals. We demand there must be no peace,” said Cele.

“We cannot run the country with criminality.”

War on criminals

In an interview on Daily Thetha on Wednesday morning, Malema said the government must suspend certain rights of criminals.

“Criminals don’t have ears, they only have a skin, and they hear through the skin, so you can’t have a government that has a conversation with criminals. Any criminal who takes up a gun against law enforcement must be dropped down. We must never negotiate with thugs,” said Malema.

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“How do you wake up in the morning and seven people are killed in KwaMashu, and yet we are not in a war. A war must be declared on criminals, and once we declare war on criminals, it means we have to suspend certain rights of those criminals, because why should you enjoy the ride that you’re denying other people to enjoy.”

Malema said Cele was no longer as effective in dealing with crime as he was in the past.

“There was a period where there was a December, I forgot the year, without a single cash in transit heist, without one, because he had taken over the off-ramps, on-ramps, freeways, visible policing and they were dropping them dead, so we cannot negotiate with criminals.

“There was a period when Bheki Cele was still Bheki Cele, he is old now.”

Malema on free speech

Malema was this week called out by the Department of Justice and Correctional Services and Judges Matter for his “vitriolic attack” on Magistrate Twanet Olivier.

Malema had called Olivier’s ruling in his firearm case a “sponsored judgment”.

A defiant Malema has refused to apologise for his comments and vowed to continue with his criticism of judges and magistrates, arguing they were not God, nor were they immune to criticism.

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On Wednesday, Malema said his “uncomfortable” comments have never been proven to violate the Constitution in a court of law.

The Equality Court last August ruled that the singing of “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” by EFF supporters in Senekal in October 2020 was not hate speech.

“Since my active political participation, in the national discourse, I’ve had so many accusations against me, that he said this, he insulted this one and all of that, all of which has never been proven in any court of law or any established institution that said this is what we will not accept as a speech in South Africa,” said Malema.

“The problem with the Freedom of Speech is that, it allows people to say things that are uncomfortable but the fact that you’re uncomfortable doesn’t make it a hate speech or it doesn’t make it a lie, it’s you being uncomfortable, is it true? Is it a fact? Is it consistent with the Constitution? If the answer is yes, deal with your uncomfortability. It has been our duty to make the comfortable, uncomfortable and the uncomfortable, comfortable.”

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