Malema says he can talk to Ramaphosa, unlike the ‘dunderhead’

During a televised interview on SABC on Sunday night, EFF leader Julius Malema was asked by Frankly Speaking host JJ Tabane about his current relationship with the ANC since the removal of Jacob Zuma as both ANC and national president.

The EFF leader admitted that he did have a better working relationship with President Cyril Ramaphosa than he had had with Zuma.

“I speak to the president. I call him if I have an issue. I would not have done that with the dunderhead [Zuma]. Because even if I’d called [Zuma], he would not have heard anything.

“Now I speak to the president. If I’m not happy, I am able to raise issues. And I do that with all presidents of political parties, by the way. We are a political party which has 100% political tolerance. We don’t get threatened by any political party.”

He was, however, still largely dismissive of Ramaphosa, who he said was being undermined by the pro-Zuma camp in the ANC, who were allegedly merely pushing him to pronounce on land expropriation in order to “undermine him … to demonstrate that he is powerless”, while they themselves were not really committed to land expropriation without compensation.

He alleged that Ramaphosa had been told by research groups that the EFF was gaining support through putting the land issue at the top of the agenda, and Ramaphosa realised he needed to do something to claw the ANC back to relevance.

Malema alleged that the success of the EFF’s fifth-birthday rally in Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape, a traditional ANC stronghold, had spooked the ANC – which led to Ramaphosa’s unexpected Tuesday-night broadcast to the nation about land expropriation without compensation.

The leader of the red berets, however, said Ramaphosa had merely repeated what the ANC had already announced in December because he was a “man without ideas”.

“Don’t confuse money with ideas. There are a lot of people with money, but who can’t think.”

He denied that the EFF was threatened by an apparently resurgent ANC and that his own party would become irrelevant – a theory Malema said had been espoused before and was shown to be short-sighted.

“We are thinkers, man. We always analyse the situation and know what intervention is needed.”