Johannesburg - EFF leader Julius Malema on Wednesday lashed out at Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, describing him as a sellout for his plans to pay compensation to white farmers whose land was taken over by war veterans nearly two decades ago.
Addressing the media at the party’s headquarters in Braamfontein, Joburg, Malema said Zimbabwe was still full of poverty and could not afford basic things like primary healthcare, proper education and infrastructure.
“It’s a sellout position taking money to people who don’t deserve it,” he said.
Malema warned Mnangagwa that the people of Zimbabwe would soon turn on him.
“He gets money to people who don’t deserve any compensation,” charged Malema, adding he had thought Mnangagwa would be a breath of fresh air.
“Anyone who compensates them for stolen land is a sellout. Anyone who compensates for the expropriation of land is a sellout,” he said.
Malema predicted that Mnangagwa would not finish his term.
Malema’s remarks came as President Cyril Ramaphosa assured white farmers in the Western Cape on Tuesday that they should not fear land reform as it would be done in terms of the law.
“It is not going to be land grabs where land is grabbed outside of the parameters of law,” said Ramaphosa.
Malema also undertook to undergo a lifestyle audit, if it was conducted by "credible" institutions, to refute allegations by former MP Thembinkosi Rawula that he had used the party’s coffers to finance his lifestyle.
Rawula resigned from the EFF on Wednesday after he failed to make it onto its lists to Parliament.
He accused Malema of turning serious people of substance in the EFF central command team into "zombies who have become cheerleaders of his insults".
“I am prepared to be under a lifestyle audit of a credible institution to demonstrate that I (have) taken no money from the EFF. Nothing,” Malema said.
Malema also revealed he was suing Rawula for R1 million for having said he stole the EFF’s money.
He promised that if a court told him to produce bank statements to prove he was not taking EFF money, he would do that.
Malema said he had finalised the summons to be served on Rawula.
According to Malema, the lawsuit was not an EFF initiative. “It’s between me and him (Rawula). I’m taking him to the cleaners,” he said.
Rawula could not be reached for comment.
In his resignation letter, he said: “I am giving you political lessons because no one within your clique dares or (is) able (to) challenge you when you vulgarise these important principles in which EFF revolutionary discipline and code of conduct is rooted from.”
He added: “Let society judge me for taking this long to speak, but in mitigation of my sentence, I have finally spoken.”
Malema also described the trashing of journalist Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s new book Gangster State: Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture, which exposes a corruption ring the ANC secretary-general allegedly led in the Free State, as thuggery.
“Burning of the book is thuggery and unacceptable. It’s anti-intellectual to burn a book,” he said.