Youth league leader Julius Malema can stay in the ANC — provided he allows the party to mould him into a good leader — President Jacob Zuma has said.
Zuma said the party was not aiming to remove Malema from public space, according to a report in the Star newspaper on Tuesday.
“No, I don’t think that should be the objective. I think the objective is how do you help Malema? Because Malema has a lot of elements that are good in him,” Zuma said in an interview with the Business Report.
“What you have to do is deal with things that are not right with Malema.”
Zuma said if Malema wanted a future within the ruling party, then he would have to watch is conduct.
“You cannot allow him to do the wrong things. In other words, the job of the ANC is to help Malema, to mould him into a dynamic, good leader. That’s what we need to do. It is only if you can’t do it, that the question becomes what do we do with him.”
He was speaking at his Pretoria residence, Mahlamba Ndlopfu.
“We must help Malema to do the right things. Because if you help Malema to do the right things, you have a very good, potential [sic] young man who could put across things very well.”
The ANC is conducting disciplinary hearings after it charged the leaders of its youth wing with violations of the party’s constitution.
Malema and ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambu face charges relating to comments on helping bring about regime change in Botswana. Deputy president Ronald Lamola, secretary general Sindiso Magaqa, his deputy Kenetswe Mosenogi, and treasurer general Pule Mabe have been charged with contravening rule 25.5 (q) and rule 25.5(o) of the constitution of the ANC.
Guilty of hate speech
A ruling in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Monday also found that Malema’s singing of the words “shoot the boer” constituted hate speech.
ANC national executive committee member Jessie Duarte told eNews on Monday night,that the party would appeal the decision, the Star reported.
AfriForum Youth opened a civil case against Malema in the Equality Court after he sang the words “dubula i’bhunu”, which translate to “shoot the boer”, at a number of youth league gatherings last year.
A number of top ANC officials testified in the case.
‘They must be clapping hands for you’
“If you are like Malema, you’ve got to be finding new issues all the time, because you get used to impressing people; they must be clapping hands for you, and that’s when you make a lot of mistakes because you say a lot of wrong things, Zuma said.
He added that such leaders harboured a particular weakness.
“Because if you spoke, for example, and people did not get excited, you feel you’ve not done it.” – Sapa