By Carien du Plessis
Julius Malema has defied his leaders by claiming that the PAC had no hand in organising the 1960 Sharpeville march, and by attacking "white boer" journalists despite President Jacob Zuma's raising concerns.
Speaking at an ANC Youth League Human rally in Mafikeng on Monday, Malema said the Sharpeville march had been organised by the ANC, but had been "hijacked" by the PAC.
The league's president said the memory of Sharpeville belonged to the ANC alone, and that young people should learn the correct history of the country. "The opportunist organisation called the PAC decided to hijack the people's march," he said.
The late PAC leader Robert Sobukwe organised the march that led to the killing of 69 people on March 21 fifty years ago - a fateful event that changed and intensified black resistance politics and led to the world's isolating apartheid South Africa.
Malema defied a call by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe on Sunday to present history "objectively". He said a "common ownership of history" was "the basis of nation-building and must never be undermined by any interest group based on the subjectivity of race, religion, class or ideology".
Malema also again defied a call by Zuma to desist from threatening journalists.
He said "white boer" journalists were conspiring against him in what he described as a vendetta.
Malema said white journalists knew nothing about the struggle for freedom and that African journalists were being undermined.
This is the second time that Malema has attacked journalists since Zuma on Friday night asked that the media be allowed to do their work without intimidation.
On Saturday, at a gathering in Bushbuckridge, Malema said journalists would "bring down the government" if people did not guard against the media, adding that journalists picked on ANC leaders and prominent black politicians.
He also said the league would "never allow this country to be run by journalists".
Malema's attack followed revelations in newspapers that companies registered in his name won hundreds of millions of rands worth of contracts from the Limpopo government, while delivering shoddy work.