Malema loses it

Ranting Malema rails at BBC reporter, the media and the world

www.timeslive.co.za

Malema outdid himself when he lost his cool with reporters, praised Zimbabwe's controversial reserve bank governor and suggested that he might have to go into "exile" so that he could freely sing his "shoot the boer" song.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO




Malema had invited journalists to the ruling party's Luthuli House headquarters, in Johannesburg, to brief them about his recent visit to Zimbabwe, where he studied that country's nationalisation and land redistribution programmes.

But when a BBC journalist, Jonah Fisher, interrupted Malema during his briefing, the youth league president lost his temper and called the reporter a "bastard" and a "bloody agent" with 'that white tendency'.

What irked Malema was Fisher's comment that Malema should not criticise Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's opponents for operating from "air-conditioned offices" in Sandton because the youth league leader himself lives in the area.

"Let me tell you before you are tjatjarag [excited]," a fuming Malema said while wagging his finger at the BBC reporter.

"This is a building of a revolutionary party and you know nothing about the revolution. So here you behave or else you jump."

Amazed by Malema's response, Fisher laughed.

"Don't laugh," warned Malema. "Chief, can you get security to remove this thingy?

"If you are not going to behave, we are going to get security to take you out.

"This is not a newsroom, this. This is a revolutionary house and you don't come here with that white tendency, not here. You can do it somewhere else, not here.

"If you have got a tendency of undermining blacks, even where you work, you are in the wrong place. Here you are in the wrong place."

An angry Fisher retorted: "But that's rubbish."

Malema responded: "You can go out. Rubbish is what you have covered in that trouser - that is the rubbish. You are a small boy, you can't do anything. Go out. Bastard! Go out! You bloody agent!"

As Fisher walked out, Malema turned his fury on the rest of the reporters in the room.

"It's not a beer hall here. It's not a drunk beer hall, cheap beer hall, this. And you ask anybody, including political parties, which tried to undermine this house, what happened to them.

"You can undermine all of us, but not the house. Never undermine the house. When you are here, you are in a different terrain. You are in our space and you are going to behave in a manner that is befitting of being in the ANC office.

"You don't howl here, especially when we speak, and you behave like you are in an American press conference? This is not America, it's Africa," he shouted.

He then accused South African journalists of writing "insulting" stories about him and the youth league.

"We don't have a problem with that and we have accepted that you are abusing that space [and] you are abusing us in that space.

"[But] you don't come and abuse us in our own space, in our own house. This is my house and you will behave according to the rules of my house. We are not forcing anybody to be here. If you feel you are offended by the removal of this gentleman, you are most welcome to walk; you are free to go.

"We don't force anybody to come here. We would be worried if the SABC doesn't come, but the rest of you, to be honest, we really don't care. SABC is our own, but the rest, it's okay whether you come or don't come. We don't have a problem."

But Malema was not done. He then dared those reporters who sympathised with Fisher to walk out of the press conference.

"Let's not push each other to a point where we will have to engage each other differently because we are not going to be undermined by young boys, and then we say 'No, we need to restrain ourselves'."

The reporters stayed to hear Malema rave about his trip to Zimbabwe and his visit to a farm owned by that country's reserve bank governor, Gideon Gono, the man many accuse of having played a leading role in bringing the country's economy to its knees.

Gono is currently at the centre of a dispute between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC.

Tsvangirai wants Gono removed from the post, as agreed by both parties when they formed the unity government in 2008.

President Jacob Zuma, who is mediating in the talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, recently met Gono in an attempt to persuade him to step down.

But according to Malema yesterday, Gono is Zimbabwe's model citizen.

"The agricultural genius shown by Gono is an inspiration, not only to the youth of Zimbabwe but to the entire southern African youth," Malema said.

The youth league president begrudgingly accepted the ANC's temporary ban on the singing of struggle songs with the words "shoot the boer" but insisted that nothing stopped him from belting them out when abroad.

"If the song is banned here, we respect that. But we will continue to sing it in full outside South Africa. This song is now in exile. It will be powerful outside this country.
"It is a sad day for the ANC when our songs, which were banned during apartheid days, are now banned when we are in democracy," he said.

On the death of AWB leader Eugene Terre Blanche, Malema said: "When his horse decided to kick him, I was not there, I was not singing the song. Because if I was singing the song, you will say his horse kicked him because of the song.

"This man has been a distaste to the people he lived with, including animals. The horse itself would not have tolerated him, so why do you want to attribute his death to me or to the youth league? It's not our responsibility. He should have known better. This is a lesson to all people in South Africa that let's all treat each other with respect and follow the labour laws - black or white."

Censorship

Malema's attack on the BBC reporter amounted to censorship, the SA National Editors' Forum (Sanef) said on Thursday.

'Malema Share's character flaws of Mugabe'

The Democratic Alliance spokesman on rural development, Mpowele Swathe, said each time Malema "open[s] his mouth, he does damage to our prospects of attracting foreign investment, developing our economy and addressing inequality and poverty."

He was referring to comments Malema made at the briefing hailing Zimbabwe's land reform program.

"His praise for Zanu-PF land invasions, his assault on the Movement for Democratic Change, his assault on our own Constitution and the fact that he threw a journalist out of his press conference for asking perfectly legitimate questions, demonstrates with painstaking clarity that he shares the same deeply flawed and manifestly dangerous characteristics as Robert Mugabe."