S.Africa: Black Trouble-maker Malema: An unled revolution will take over SA if nothing changes now, Malema tells court
EFF leader Julius Malema was on Thursday questioned before the Equality Court on what he had meant when he said he was not calling for the slaughter of white people “at least for now” in 2016.
Malema was on the second day of his cross-examination before the court, where he and his party have been dragged by AfriForum which accuses them of hate speech and of inciting violence against white people and farmers by insisting on singing the Dubul’ibuni/Shoot the Boer struggle song.
Malema had insisted on his second day that the word “Boer” was directed at the system that continued to oppress people and not individual whites and that farmers were the face of the system that resulted in dispossession of black people and land theft.
I am not a prophet. I don’t know what is going to happen in the future. If things don’t change there will be an unled revolution in SA and that revolution will affect all of us, including myself
When grilled by AfriForum lawyer, Adv Mark Oppenheimer, over some of his racially charged utterances over the past years, including the speech which he made in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, in 2016 over “not calling for the slaughter of white people for now”, Malema said he said “for now” because he could not guarantee the future.
“I am not a prophet. I don’t know what is going to happen in the future. If things don’t change there will be an unled revolution in SA and that revolution will affect all of us, including myself,” Malema said.
Oppenheimer however pressed Malema on what he was implying when he said “at least for now”.
“That means at some future date, you may call for the slaughter of white people,” Oppenheimer said.
Malema insisted that he meant that he did not know what was going to happen in the future.
Malema retaliated and refused when Oppenheimer invited him to pledge that he would not make the call in the future.
Tensions grew higher in the courtroom as Oppenheimer accused Malema of directing his rebuke of white people towards him, while Malema accused him of being personal as he had repeatedly explained that he was referring to AfriForum when he says “you” to him as their legal representative.
Oppenheimer asked Malema why he had apportioned blame on all white South Africans for the dispossession of black people.
“Do you want to hold modern white South Africans [liable] for crimes committed by people hundreds of years ago? That is the danger, because you are going to describe a whole group of people as criminals, murderers and land thieves without any evidence that they committed those crimes,” he said.
Malema insisted that white South Africans were beneficiaries of dispossessions and that they continued to carry the blame as a group.
“When the white people came here and took our land, they did not come as individuals. They took it as settlers and then pushed us to land that is not even productive and made us to stay like sardines,” he said.
Malema said that in many other countries that had experienced atrocities, generations of those who had been perpetrators had paid reparations for the crimes of their forebears, which he said did not happen in SA.
He stressed that those who inherited farms or sold them remained criminals as they were beneficiaries of stolen property.