Parliament - Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema on Thursday said the ruling ANC had created a culture of violence that underpinned the xenophobic attacks sweeping the country.
He told the National Assembly this was evidenced by the government’s response to striking workers and communities staging service delivery protests.
“When (Andries) Tatane protested, you killed him,” he said of the 33-year-old protestor killed in Ficksburg in 2011 and cited the shooting of miners at Marikana as another example.
“You applied violence against the EFF,” he added.
Malema charged that he noticed, minutes earlier when President Jacob Zuma condemned the wave of xenophobia in an address to the chamber, that his heart did not appear to be in it.
“You body language did not suggest a leader,” Malema said, before adding that the president had failed to stop his son Edward Zuma from expressing anti-foreigner sentiment.
“You cannot even whip your own son into line.”
Malema ended his three-minute speech with a passionate plea to end the attacks that has left at least five people dead and hundreds displaced.
“Don’t kill each other, no country can survive in isolation.”
Zuma made a televised address on Wednesday condemning the xenophobic attacks, which have occured mainly in KwaZulu-Natal before sporadic attacks flared up in Johannesburg, and reiterated this in an address to the National Assembly.
“We condemn the violence in the strongest possible terms. The attacks violate all the values that South Africa embodies, especially the respect for human life, human rights, human dignity and ubuntu,” Zuma told MPs.
“Our country stands firmly against all intolerance such as racism, xenophobia, homophobia and sexism.”
ANA