Malema forgives Zuma, Twitter goes crazy

EFF leader Julius Malema attended a service at the Apostolic Faith Mission River of Life in Soshanguve, Tshwane, on Sunday, where he said he had forgiven former president Jacob Zuma after hearing a sermon on forgiveness.

“We came here for wisdom and since the priest was telling us about forgiveness as politicians, we must now forgive Zuma. We forgive him for the sake of the priest because we cannot go against the word of the priest,” Malema said.

The EFF leader expressed his animosity towards Zuma as recently as Saturday when an interview with Tim Modise on eNCA was broadcast, although it was in the context of him explaining he believed President Cyril Ramaphosa was no better than his predecessor.

“They [Zuma and Ramaphosa] are the same. They are from the same pot. You can’t cook a chicken in the same pot and say this piece is better than that piece. They are all the same. What is the pot? The pot is African National Corruption. That’s where they’re cooked. They are all products of that,” he told Modise.

Malema was originally one of Zuma’s fiercest supporters as president of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), to the point of famously saying at a rally he would kill or die for him.

“We are prepared to die for Zuma. We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma,” he said in 2008.

READ MORE: Malema declares war on Ramaphosa, Motsepe and Gordhan

However, he was suspended from the ANCYL a few years later, in 2011, for saying that the youth league would send a team to Botswana and attempt to enact a change of regime, among other reasons. He also reportedly disrupted an ANC meeting of senior party members, including Zuma. Then, in early 2012, he was expelled.

After his expulsion, he turned on Zuma almost instantly, calling him a “dictator” with “no interest for his own people”. This led to the establishment of the EFF, who made disrupting Zuma’s annual state of the nation address a tradition, starting in 2015. By August 2017 he was leading his party in chants of “Zuma Must Fall” and marching to the Union Building in Pretoria to call for his removal.

When this removal took place, however, Malema almost instantly set his sights on his successor Ramaphosa – as well as Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan – as his new enemies. At a rally for the EFF’s fifth birthday party in July, 2018, he accused Gordhan of controlling the president, accused the president and his brother-in-law Patrice Motsepe of being guilty of state capture, and declared “war” on the presidency.

Unsurprisingly, the EFF leader’s new attitude of forgiveness became a hot topic on social media.

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