Mngxitama says he doesn’t speak to Kim Jong-un. No, wait, he does

In a televised interview on eNCA on Sunday morning to discuss Black First Land First’s (BLF’s) Saturday elections manifesto launch, the party’s leader, Andile Mngxitama, was asked to explain his utterances in Orlando East the day before that suggested he has been in contact with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

At first he denied that he spoke to Kim, but when PolitBureau host Aldrin Sampear confronted him with reports that he had said differently the day before, Mngxitama changed his tune and said he had in fact communicated with the leader of the notoriously secretive country.

Mngxitama was wearing a suit he claimed was given to him by North Korea, and he declared that the BLF endorsed North Korea and its communist policies, which many critics have blamed for keeping the country underdeveloped and its people deeply oppressed, particularly when compared with its flourishing free-market neighbour, South Korea.

Kim retains power through a system of succession in his family, which is only thinly justified by “elections” held every four to five years for the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s national legislature, and every four years for Local People’s Assemblies. All seats are always won by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland.

“But did you speak to [Kim]?” asked Sampear.

“No, no, no, no, I don’t speak to him directly. But I mean, you know, we are really inspired by his capacity to…”

“When did he tell you that he endorses your party?”

“No, there was no endorsement. We simply said there is a suit…”

Sampear interrupted: “No, no. Yesterday you said that he…”

“No, don’t try to twist things. We said we have a suit that comes from him. We are very happy and we are the ones who are endorsing him because he stands up against Donald Trump. He’s the only man who can do that.”

Sampear interrupted: “But you said that he said that to you. You said he asked you about Freedom Front Plus. When did he say this to you, Andile?”

Mngxitama then accused Sampear of trying to trick him into revealing how the BLF was communicating with an enemy of the West, especially US president Trump, and he would not do that on a news platform allegedly owned by or in favour of the BLF’s sworn enemy Johann Rupert.

“Do you think I can come to Rupert television and tell you how we talk to serious revolutionaries on earth who we know Donald Trump wants to get rid of?”

“So you’ve never spoken to Kim?”

“No. We speak to him.”

“But just earlier on, you just said you don’t.”

“No, no. But, you see, the point is this: you want me to reveal to you how we communicate with revolutionaries. I’m not going to do that on Rupert television.”

Sampear then laughed and encouraged viewers to make up their own minds about whether there had been contact between Kim and Mngxitama.

Earlier, Mngxitama spoke passionately against the presence of white people in South Africa, even if they were born here. He called them “land thieves” and demanded that they pay restitution for years of historical dispossession.

Sampear challenged him to defend the criticism that the BLF slogans such as “land or death” and the song “one settler, one bullet” were inciting violence.

Mngxitama said it was unacceptable that black people were being treated as tenants in Africa. He said black people should be prepared to die for land.

“We are not saying kill anyone,” but added that black people were dying due to not having land and should be prepared to die to get it. He said the white settler song was historical, first sung by the Pan Africanist Congress, and the BLF’s struggle was historical. Mngxitama claimed he was continuing the liberation the ANC had started, but abandoned.

“We are the authentic carriers of the liberation project.”

Mngxitama criticised black people who think they are like whites, and said white people could not solve the problem of racism they had created. He blamed numerous social problems centred on poverty on systems created by white people.

He would agitate for a new constitution if he made it to parliament after the upcoming elections.

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