African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema on Thursday assured the South African Human Rights Commission that he would never again use the word “kill” in public statements.
To recap, Malema told a Youth Day rally in Thaba Nchu in the Free State: “We are prepared to die for Zuma,” adding: “We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma.”
Malema, in his wisdom, also told the crowd that the Scorpions’ corruption case against Zuma, expected to begin later this year in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, should be dropped. “The future belongs to us. We do not want a situation where the state prosecutes its own president,” he said.
He said the youth league was planning to assemble a legal team to try to get the case against Zuma thrown out of court.
A few days later, Malema refused to apologise for his remark, and instead accused the media of distorting his words. “We never meant literally that people should be killed. We never called on anybody to immediately take up arms,” he said, by way of explanation. “Why do you apologise for something you did not mean?”
Malema’s statements were ill-advised, as were his attempts to worm out of them, but they can perhaps be put down to callow youth and populism. However, there can be no excuse for Congress of South African Trade Unions secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi.
In the same week, Vavi said: “So yes, because Jacob Zuma is one of us, and he is one of our leaders, for him, we are prepared to lay our lives [sic] and to shoot and kill,” he said to applause.
Then, on June 28, Vavi was at it again. “We are prepared to die in defence of one another and for our revolution. And that is why we cannot apologise for being revolutionaries,” he said, addressing guests at unionist Bheki Mkhize’s tombstone unveiling.
It is one thing to say one is prepared to lay down one’s life for the revolution and another to say one is prepared to “shoot and kill”. This is the kind of logic used by Mad Bob Mugabe up north, in justifying his crushing the opposition in the name of revolution.
Worse still are the writings by South African Communist Party secretary general Blade Nzimande, who says the rights commission was behaving like a “kangaroo court” with its threats of action against those who made “kill for Zuma” remarks. He maintains that Vavi and Malema had not yet had their chance to put across their side of the story.
“This is a very serious violation of the Constitution, laws of natural justice and the very spirit and the letter of the Act governing the HRC, and practically turns the HRC into a kangaroo court,” he says.
Vavi and Malema, however, actually did make their remarks. There may be other things they can say later to justify their utterances, but in the heat of the day, up on the stage in front of their supporters, they were the ones who opened their mouths and spoke into the microphones.
The man himself, Jacob Zuma, has been disappointingly quiet on the issue. Thank God for Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
“We have to remind some in our country that there are those in Zimbabwe who have been ready to kill for Mr Mugabe,” said Tutu this week.
“See what happens. They [the South Africans] speak about a revolution. Now, I don’t know what that refers to, but whatever it is, that revolution is not going to be sustained and preserved by intemperate, almost inane utterances.
“That revolution, the dream that is South Africa, the promise that is South Africa, that is going to be preserved when you and I are vigilant, you and I preserve freedom, you and I stand up for justice … you and I say, hey, our people did not shed blood for nothing.”
| FULL SPEED AHEAD |
NOT SO FAST |
Desmond Tutu
As usual, the beloved Archbishop is the voice of reason, saying the “horrid nightmare” in Zimbabwe showed what happened when people were prepared to kill for their leaders — a jab at ANC Youth League Julius Malema’s “kill for Zuma” comments. |
 African Union
“Not so fast.” This is what the AU should have told Robert Mugabe at its Egypt meeting following the Zimbabwean President’s sham of a one-man run-off election. Instead it approved a resolution calling for negotiations between Mugabe and the opposition — which seems an unlikely scenario. Now what? |
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