Malema: Voters don’t exercise their power

EFF leader Julius Malema says the “military intervention” option to rid South Africa of corruption should never be allowed to happen, as it did in Zimbabwe.

He said South Africa would only be changed through the “power of the voter” and that anything else should not be encouraged.

“You can’t do unconstitutional things because you are irritated with [President Jacob] Zuma. No amount of marching, looting, destruction of property will bring a regime change.”

But, even with all evidence of state capture, voters would vote for ANC, Malema said.

“Voters don’t exercise their power.”

He attacked ANC presidential hopeful Cyril Ramaphosa, who has made the fight against corruption a central plank of his campaign platform: “I have never seen Ramaphosa in a police station filing corruption charges.”

He said the EFF’s position was that “Zuma must go, not the ANC must go”. He remarked that the ANC as an organisation should “self-correct”, but that it was not capable of doing so.

The ANC’s elective conference in December would be “like the unveiling of a tombstone” because the organisation was “long dead and buried”, said Malema. The EFF leader said he could not understand why everyone was getting so excited about the ANC conference because “nothing will change”.

He also vowed that Zuma would not be allowed to serve for a third term as head of state, because the EFF would challenge any such move in court.

“We will take him to court and if he defies the court, he will be charged and arrested.”

Malema said SA was on the verge of being “a failed state”, with what he described as “mediocrity in the highest office”, along with “untouchable leadership” and corruption.

“The sitting government is self- destructing.”

Asked whether he had done an about-turn on Zimbabwe, Malema repeated that he still loved ousted president Robert Mugabe – but that did not mean he could not criticise him.

“A good dancer knows when to leave the dance floor. I said to Mugabe he must leave … I was insulted by Zanu-PF. I said to them ‘one day you will agree with me’. I saw long ago that Mugabe will be humiliated if he doesn’t leave.”

However, he said he did not believe that Mugabe’s wife, Grace, was to blame for Mugabe’s long stay in power and eventual fall. This was a “patriarchal view.”

He drew a burst of laughter when he said his own wife was his biggest critic: “I ask her if she was sent by Zuma.”

Malema also spent some time on the subject of white privilege, remarking that “we have witnessed the growing confidence of white supremacists who seek to undermine the democratic project”.

“The beneficiaries of apartheid are still benefiting today and anyone who speaks out against them are seen as racist. You can’t use the Guptas to justify an attack on white monopoly capital (WMC). They’re all the same. They’re all parasitic.”

Whites must stop being so fragile. An attack on WMC isn’t an attack on whites, he said.

– news@citizen.co.za

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