Cape Town - President Jacob Zuma is a “champion of corruption”, Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema said on Friday.
Briefing journalists in Cape Town a day after he and his fellow EFF MPs were forcibly evicted from Parliament during Zuma's State of the Nation Address, he said more than R60 billion had disappeared in South Africa through corrupt activities, and there was no accountability.
“Why should there be accountability when you've got a sitting president himself being a champion of corruption?”
ANC politicians were “hell bent” on maintaining the status quo because they were benefiting from corruption.
“Why would you want a most clever president, who is not corrupt, because the most stupid president, who is corrupt, will never hold you accountable for your corrupt activities.
“Because he knows that he himself is corrupt. So it's not like these people in the ANC do not see that their president is corrupt. They are aware, but because they are a group of corrupt people, they are unable to call each other to order.”
Malema referred to what he called a corruption crisis in South Africa, including “profit shifting and transfer pricing”.
He suggested the solution lay in transferring the land owned by whites to the country's indigenous people.
“ 1/8It is 3/8 a crisis that should be confronted through a very clear passing of legislation which will transfer property into the hands of our people, and change the colonial patterns of property ownership in South Africa.
“But the ANC has been very scared to take that decision because they are leading and representing those who exploit us.”
On the electricity crisis at Eskom, he said government lacked the capacity to solve the problem because of corruption.
“The current government lacks the capacity to deliver electricity, and when asked questions they blame it on apartheid.”
Yet the African National Congress had published a document in the early 1990s titled “Ready to Govern”.
Malema said they should have seen then that there was a crisis coming.
“They are talking about apartheid because they are unable to confront those who are given a responsibility to build power stations for us.
“They are unable to do so because they are in business with those people. They have got a generally corrupt relationship with people who are given tenders to build power stations, and as a result they are unable to intervene.”
Malema then turned his attention to the judiciary, saying it was worrisome that some judges Ä not the majority of them Ä were “part of this corruption”.
He said the EFF was concerned about the judiciary.
“Everything else in South Africa has been corrupted. Everything, including the church, has been corrupted. The only thing that is still showing some signs of neutrality and objectivity is the judiciary.
“If we lose the judiciary, we are gone.”
Sapa