Malema: We’re bringing 50 000 to Joburg

741 Economic Freedom Fighters Commander In Chief Julius Malema being interviewed by The Star in his party's offices in Braamfontein near Johannesburg. 240714 Picture: Boxer Ngwenya

741 Economic Freedom Fighters Commander In Chief Julius Malema being interviewed by The Star in his party's offices in Braamfontein near Johannesburg. 240714 Picture: Boxer Ngwenya

Published Jul 25, 2014

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Johannesburg - The Economic Freedom Fighters are preparing to bring 50 000 of its “fighters” from around the country to march on the Gauteng legislature in Joburg.

Speaking on the eve of the party’s first anniversary on Saturday, leader Julius Malema said the party would not be bullied by the ANC.

“We are not schoolboys. We have taken a decision that we will bring 50 000 people here.

“Undermining the EFF in Gauteng is undermining the EFF around the country. We are a unitary organisation. We are going back to that legislature and we are going to fight.”

EFF members protested this week against the decision of legislature Speaker Ntombi Mekgwe to prevent eight MPLs from entering the chamber while dressed in their red overalls and domestic workers’ attire.

“They know us. We will teach them a lesson because we were not being disruptive. If the ANC had accepted overalls, today overalls would not have been an issue.

“We fought for this right to protest, and so we are coming to Johannesburg with a full force.”

 

Addressing hundreds of EFF supporters and students at the launch of the book, The Coming Revolution, at Wits University Great Hall on Thursday night, Malema said EFF leaders decided to write the book because they did not want others to distort their ideas on socialism.

“We are writing our own book, because we don’t want our story to be written by a young white person,” he said, in a veiled reference to Nelson Mandela’s former PA Zelda la Grange, who launched her book Good Morning, Mr Mandela recently.

“We have let our story be told by some young white kids who have no history in the Struggle. We were more agitated by the fact that some people have written books with regard to nationalisation, without the perspective of the EFF. We wrote our own book because we want our people to read a reliable story, and not a distortion.”

Malema urged his audience to prioritise education and not materialism. This, he said, was the viable means to defeat “white monopoly capital”.

“An educated nation is a liberated nation. We want you to compete with qualifications and not names of jeans. We want a knowledgeable society with qualifications. We don’t want people who compete with material, we want people who compete with knowledge.”

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* The Star executive editor Janet Smith is the co-author of the book with EFF’s leader Floyd Shivambu.

The Star

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