The list of witnesses testifying for and against Julius Malema at his disciplinary hearing has turned a spotlight on the rift between his backers and opponents in the ANC’s top leadership.
Malema was expected to plead not guilty on Thursday when he took the stand for the first time since the disciplinary hearings began three weeks ago. The hearings were shifted from Luthuli House in the Johannesburg city centre to Kibler Park, south of the city, following violent protests by Malema’s supporters on the first day.
The Mail & Guardian can reveal that Human Settlements Minister and ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Tokyo Sexwale, Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, ANC national working committee member Tony Yengeni and the league’s former secretary general, Rapu Molekane, will testify on behalf of Malema and other youth league officials.
The prosecution has brought in as witnesses ANC chairperson Baleka Mbete, ANC NEC member and party spokesperson Jackson Mthembu and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe.
Malema’s lawyers have challenged the validity of the ANC charges, which include:
- Causing serious divisions in the ANC by saying the departure of former president Thabo Mbeki had left a vacuum in African leadership;
- Bringing the party into disrepute after the youth league called for regime change in Botswana;
- Barging into a meeting of ANC officials at Luthuli House; and
- Calling white people “criminals” for having taken land from blacks by force.
The youth league believes the charges against Malema are part of a plan by Mantashe and President Jacob Zuma to oust him from the ANC and the youth league before the party’s elective conference in Mangaung in the Free State next year.
Zuma has dismissed the claim, saying the ANC’s intention is not to oust Malema but to mould him into a better leader.
Malema’s legal team has spent the past three weeks trying to punch procedural holes in the charges, prompting the chairperson of the ANC’s national disciplinary committee, Derek Hanekom, to complain about the defence’s strategy of trying to win the case on technicalities.
However, Malema’s defence counsel is understood to have warned Hanekom not to take issues of procedure for granted.
His legal team emphasised that former ANC cadres had been killed after being falsely accused of being infiltrators at Quattro, the ANC’s secret detention centre in Angola in the 1980s.
Sexwale, who was head of special projects in the ANC in the 1980s, is expected to testify that there was nothing untoward in the league’s statement on Botswana. It is understood that, in defence of Malema and the Botswana statement, Sexwale plans to argue that Botswana’s government is gradually moving towards totalitarianism.
In recent months, Botswana has been criticised by human rights groups for torture, extra judicial killings and gross human rights abuses, allegedly committed by members of its security forces.
The league will also argue that Botswana broke ranks with the African Union by expressing support for the rebel National Transitional Council in Libya, in spite of opposition by African countries, including South Africa.
In addition, Malema’s defence will point to an ANC resolution that the party should provide support to fraternal organisations and former liberation movements on the continent, such as Botswana’s main opposition party, the Botswana National Front.
They want the ANC to name a specific policy which he is alleged to have violated.
The ANC is using a clause in the Freedom Charter that stipulated in 1955 that the former British protectorate, Bechuanaland, must decide its own future, a policy that is in line with Southern African Development Community policy that individual countries should respect the sovereignty of other states.
However, in a counter argument, Malema’s team has challenged the reference to SADC policies in matters that concern the ANC.
Sources said that Molekane, now a deputy director general responsible for Europe in the department of international relations and co-operation, would focus on the league’s autonomy and the importance of respecting and protecting it.
“He was in the group of leaders who defended the ANCYL’s autonomy at the league’s relaunch in former KwaNdebele in 1991,” said a Malema-aligned source who is also a government employee.
“He was there when former ANC president Oliver Tambo said that the youth league must never succumb to pressure to have its thinking controlled by the ANC.”
The current disciplinary action against the league’s top officials is also viewed by detractors of the ruling party’s senior leadership as an assault on the league’s autonomy.
The league has consistently complained that there are concerted efforts to reduce it to a “desk” in the ANC, a move similar to one defeated by Molekane and his executive in 1991.
On Thursday, Malema scored a victory when the disciplinary committee withdrew a charge relating to a statement he made during an interview that the pro-Zuma faction’s agenda to send him to Cuba or China had been defeated.
Malema was referring to attempts during his first disciplinary hearing by the ANC to take him to Cuba or China for political education.
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