Malema is on the warpath – again

INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

Julius Malema addresses a rally in Moutse West in Limpopo. Photo: Moloko Moloto

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, with his sights firmly set on December’s elective conference, instructed local ANC branches on Thursday to each have a minimum of 500 members by March.

“Let’s get ready. We are going for a fight. We are going to Mangaung,” he urged at a rally in Moutse West, near Marble Hall in Limpopo.

“We are going to reclaim the ANC, to position it in such a way that it will survive the next hundred years.”

Although Malema later denied that he was aiming to remove the ANC leadership, he made it clear that Limpopo should influence the elective conference in Mangaung at the end of the year.

He took a swipe at the ANC leadership for having disciplined him and other league leaders – he is in the process of appealing against a five-year suspension for bringing the ANC into disrepute and for sowing divisions.

“Today, those who have a different view are pushed aside,” Malema said.

“Discipline in the ANC was never used to suppress a different view.”

He said the ANC had survived for 100 years because it engaged in robust debates and allowed criticism.

“If there is a leadership that is scared of criticism, that leadership will kill the ANC,” he said. “If there is a leadership that is afraid of new views, new ideas, that leadership will kill the ANC.”

He cautioned that an erstwhile party president, Dr Alfred Xuma, was removed from power for having rejected the programme of action to launch the armed struggle, as proposed by the then ANCYL leadership of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.

“Structures of the ANC accepted the ideas of the young boys, as they were called by Dr Xuma, and then rejected him,” said Malema.

He added that young people, as “children of Nelson Mandela”, should be fearless.

“Let people defeat us politically. They must not be petty and abuse power,” Malema said.

He challenged the detractors of his nationalisation campaign to provide an alternative policy.

Then he reiterated the call for mines to be nationalised and for land to be expropriated without compensation.

He said colonisers themselves had not paid for the land when they removed those who had occupied it.

“They are asking too much from us.

“How do I pay you for killing our own people?” asked Malema.

“We can’t continue saying that South Africa belongs to all of us, yet we have no (proof),” the youth league leader said.

He said domestic mines were not benefiting the ordinary people.

“The reason why they employ foreign nationals is because they want to pay them little money.

“We need total freedom. And this freedom will never be complete without economic freedom,” he said. – The Star