Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) leader Julius Malema said he should have been invited to be apart of the meeting President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation had with United States of America President Donald Trump.
“The nonsense that Trump did, he will never do that nonsense” in his presence, Malema said.
“Comrades, we must defend our country against imperialism. The only organisation that is hated by imperialists is the EFF. I will never be intimidated by America,” Malema said on Sunday at the Mminara Sports Ground in Kwakwatsi, Free State.
The red berets leader told a crowd of his supporters that he would never be intimidated by Trump.
“They were speaking about me in that meeting at the White House. If they were not gossiping about me, they should have called me into that meeting. I would have answered everything that Donald Trump wanted from us.”
Malema said that if US officials were not afraid of him, they should have included him.
“That nonsense that Trump did in America, he will never do that nonsense in my presence, because I will confront him here and there with the facts.”
He criticised Ramaphosa for cowardice for not defending South Africa during the high-level meeting.
“You’ve got a cowardly president. He left here, and he won’t be bullied. When he arrived there, he was shaking. Donald Trump said to him, ‘When you say farmers, you mean white people.’ He kept quiet.”
This comes after Trump called for the arrest of Malema over his use of the controversial “Kill the Boer” chant, escalating already strained relations between the two countries.
Trump made the remarks during the meeting with President Ramaphosa at the White House. The meeting aimed to address growing diplomatic and economic tensions.
During the discussion, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen told Trump, top US officials, and media that his party joined the Government of National Unity to prevent certain political parties, particularly the EFF and uMkhonto weSizwe, from entering government.
In an explosive start to the talks, Trump sharply criticised what he described as the targeting of Afrikaner farmers.
His comments were based on a video clip showing Malema speaking in Parliament about land reform.
The EFF claims the clip was misused to support a misleading narrative.
Tensions between Washington and Pretoria have intensified during Trump’s second term, especially following his criticism of South Africa’s land reform policy, which he described as a “seizure of land” from white Afrikaner farmers, a claim denied by the South African government.
Relations worsened further in February when the United States cut HIV/AIDS funding to South Africa.
More recently, the US granted refugee status to 49 white South Africans, citing racial discrimination, another claim denied by Pretoria.
Meanwhile, Malema criticised Ramaphosa for failing to counter Trump’s claims of white genocide.
“Farmers do not mean white people. There are black farmers. There are white farmers. Ramaphosa is a farmer himself. He should have said to Donald Trump, ‘No, farmers are not white. I’m a farmer myself. I am not white.’ Why didn’t he present that simple fact before Donald Trump?
“Why didn’t he say there are so many people killed in South Africa and the majority of them are blacks? There is no white genocide in South Africa. He opens his eyes in shock.”
Malema said he knows South Africa “with his eyes closed.”
“This picture does not belong to us. We don’t have mass graves of white people in South Africa,” Malema said.
This came after Trump showed Ramaphosa a screenshot of a video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and falsely presented it as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.
“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Trump reportedly said, holding up a print-out of an article with the image during the meeting.
Malema also said Trump questioned Ramaphosa about why he has not been arrested.
“He told Ramaphosa, ‘Why are you not arresting Julius Malema? Why is Julius Malema not in jail?’
“He can’t respond with the simple fact that this song, ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer,’ was approved by the Constitutional Court. We are a constitutional democracy. We must defend the decisions of the court.”
He continued, “By failing to defend the Constitutional Court, it means he failed to protect the constitution. And when you fail to protect the constitution as a president of the country, you have failed in your primary duty of defending the sovereignty of South Africa.
Malema criticised Ramaphosa as a failure
“You must understand one thing. When Trump says, ‘Why is this man not in jail? Why is this man not arrested?’ he simply means, why is this man not dead? Why are you not killing this man who wants to kill white people? In that White House.”
Politics
