- Zuma: Muzzle Malema? No!
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Addressing young people at a Human Rights Day rally in Mafikeng, Malema criticised what he called “white boer” journalists and claimed they had a vendetta against him.
702 reported that Malema told the crowd that white journalists knew nothing about the struggle for freedom.
He also said that African journalists were being undermined.
Malema said in his address that the Sharpeville uprising of 1960 — which later became a massacre when police opened fire and killed 69 people protesting the pass laws — was organised by the ANC, but hijacked by the Pan Africanist Congress.
Malema told the crowd they needed to learn the correct history of the country.
The youth league president also reiterated his call for the nationalisation of mines, telling the Mafikeng residents that they should own the minerals of their region.
Potshots
Two opposition leaders took potshots at Malema during a special Human Rights Day debate in a joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on March 16.
Pieter Mulder, the leader of the Freedom Front Plus, who is also deputy minister for agriculture and fisheries in the Zuma Cabinet, said that Malema is an ill-disciplined, rude and conflict-seeking juvenile.
“He is not only an embarrassment to the ANC, but to the whole of South Africa,” Mulder said. “He mocks each one of the ANC leaders who sit in Parliament. Why does the ANC not act against him? Are you scared of him? Do you not have the courage to, in the interest of South Africa, call him to order?”
Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance and Premier of the Western Cape, spoke to the joint sitting about George Orwell’s concept of “doublethink”. “This involves holding two contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time and believing both of them,” she said.
“Doublethink involves distorting history and reality — and then denying the distortion so that you can believe your own propaganda.”
‘The irony was lost on Malema’
Zille said: “Take Julius Malema propagating the nationalisation of mines, even as he brokers lucrative private mining deals to enrich himself. Or his advice to the youth of South Africa. Only a year ago, Malema said: ‘You must never role model a rich person who can’t explain how they got rich. In the ANC we must not have corrupt people as role models. Corrupt means a simple thing — you can’t explain the big amount in your bank account. In less than a year, you have got everything.
“Yesterday you were down and out, but today you have everything which shows in your fancy dress code.
“The irony was lost on Malema, with his Breitling watch, his Armani jeans, his various multimillion-rand homes and top-of-the-range vehicles. This contradiction symbolises the ANC today. It is the outcome of the doublethink of the national democratic revolution. It inevitably leads to cronyism, corruption and the criminal state. It is a party professing to advance people’s rights, even as it erodes them.” – Sapa