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ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema. Photo: Chris Collingridge

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Suspended ANC Youth League president Julius Malema said on Friday he was unperturbed by not being given a chance to speak at the ruling party's centenary celebrations in Bloemfontein at the weekend.

“I am not here to speak... President Zuma will speak on behalf of all of us. He was elected, whether we like him or not,” he told a crowd at the Moroka Primary School in Thaba Nchu in the Free State.

ANC chairwoman Baleka Mbete told reporters on Wednesday that Malema would not be given the podium on Sunday, when Zuma delivered his annual January 8 statement in Bloemfontein.

Mbete said all messages of support, including Malema's, would be compiled into a booklet to be distributed to the 100,000 people expected to attend the ANC's centenary festivities over the weekend.

Malema also stated that he wants to see white domestic workers in South Africa in the next 10 years.

Currently whites controlled everything from the means of production and mines to banks and labour, he told the crowd.

“That must change. We want to find in the next 10 years white domestic workers,” he said to deafening applause from locals who packed the hall of Moroka High School.

He said the youth league's call for “economic freedom” should not be viewed as a way of excluding whites.

“We never said they must be sent to sea. We just want to share the cake.”

He said he was in politics because of the poor, particularly domestic workers.

Malema spoke of black people's struggles, some of whom converted their kitchens into bedrooms at night, shack dwellers who never celebrated when it rained because the structures leaked, and those who barely had anything to eat at home.

Malema, who bought a house in Sandton, Joburg, for R3 million, and was rebuilding it for R8.5m, said he didn't have to stay in a squatter camp to know the struggles people there faced.

“I am a child of a domestic worker.”

He said the history of the ANC was to fight for “economic freedom” and that President Jacob Zuma should, in his January 8 address, speak about providing houses, water and sanitation.

“I am not in the struggle for a position. That is why we don't care whether we are suspended or not,” he said.

Malema and five other top ANCYL officials were suspended from the party in November last year for bringing the ANC into disrepute and sowing division in its ranks. – Sapa