THE EUSEBIUS MCKAISER SHOW: INTERVIEW WITH EFF CIC JULIUS MALEMA

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EUSEBIUS: Seven minutes after eleven o’clock! Thank you so much for staying with the
Eusibius McKaiser Show – with you until noon and as promised, this hour we’re
hanging out with Julius Malema who is of course the leader of the Economic
Freedom Front and the question we posing really is, “Could the EFF be the
government in waiting? Can it deliver, let’s call it a better life for all?”

And you can give your viewpoint, the questions you want me to put to him; the
themes that you think are the most important to explore because you know
that an hour is just gonna fly by. If you’re on Twitter use the hash tag
#MalemawithEusebius and just listen a little bit between the conversation that
Julius and I will have and then I’ll give you a chance to call in.

You can also engage him directly. Remember you can also watch this interview,
we’re streaming it live on the 702 Facebook page as well. Julius good morning
to you, thank you so much for coming in.

MALEMA: Thank you Eusebius. It’s not Economic Freedom Front, it’s Economic Freedom
Fighters.

EUSEBIUS: My bad, my bad. I wonder whether we can start off by talking economics. Our
country is not short of problems that we need to solve and there’s racism that
we need to deal with, there’s corruption, there’s the rule of … there’s all sorts
of things. But if we don’t have an economy that works we can kiss goodbye the
potential of our society. I think we can agree on that.
MALEMA: Absolutely.

EUSEBIUS: I’ve had a look at your manifesto, it is incredibly detailed, which is useful for
us as voters. And perhaps there hasn’t been much discussion with all the
political parties about the content of your manifesto proposals – and as I said to
you on the phone last week, I wanna start three because I want this to be in
the first instance a discussion about ideas and about policy proposal.

You propose as the Economic Freedom Fighters that economic growth within
the first two years of an EFF government, can be consistently each year at six
per cent; and then the next three years after that it will go from six per cent
to ten per cent. Currently we are around not point seven per cent, and the
most optimistic upward revision is just over one per cent.

Can you explain to me, and take as much time as you want – what is the
economic mechanism which will get us from one per cent to six per cent within
twelve months of you taking over the Union Buildings.

MALEMA: Well we are first going to nationalize the land and give it to our people so that
you increase the number of people who produce food for our country. We say
hundred per cent of the food produced in South Africa will be produced here
and they will not look for food anywhere else. We’re saying we need to create
national infrastructure – because there is no national infrastructure and as it is
now, most of the construction companies are actually going under because
there is no work that is given to them.

And we’re speaking about national roads as well, as part of growing our
economy; that we need to put more money in road infrastructure. We’re
speaking about special economic zones; that we need to create as many special
economic zones as possible. Particularly in the areas where people live because
most of our industries are far from where people live and anyone who is then
amenable to such an idea should get some incentives; be it water, be it
electricity, or even tax incentives because such a person would have opened,
you know, industry in a place like Tabazimbi or in kwaMashu directly (not just
outside kwaMashu).
 So such people need to be incentivized because they are responding to the call
of government to create jobs amongst, where our people staying. We’re saying
if you are to open for instance, malls in the townships, those malls must be
owned by the owners of spaze shops because they are going to close down
spaza shops. But also those malls must procure locally, meaning the people
where the mall is built must be encouraged to produce for the mall.

They may not be there now, the reason being that they don’t have the taker;
but once the taker is there and says to them, “Please can you sow school
jerseys for my shop. I will buy directly from you.” There are lot of stokvels in
the townships and the villages. They can do that. So in that way you have also
the local economy being activated. Direct foreign investment should be
allowed on our own terms.

It shouldn’t own land; it should get long leases depending on what they’re
looking for. And once they are interested we can even allocate to them land
free of charge as long as they are going to employ two thousand plus of our
people in South Africa and pay them the living wage.

EUSEBIUS: Okay, so here’s the bit that doesn’t make sense to me right – it’s the actual
number six and the number ten. So each one of the activities that you mention
in terms of economic … and I’ve tried to have this conversation with many
economists to try and make me understand what does economic growth means.
How do we measure economic growth? How do academics, economists measure
it regardless of where they fit ideologically in the economic debate and the
number six, if you’re not literate on finance, it doesn’t sound like a big
number.

Ah six, ten, it doesn’t sound like a big deal but in economics and in economic
literature to go from roughly not point seven per cent within one financial
year, you go to six per cent, two years later you are doing as well as countries
like Angola, Mozambique but they do it off a very small base, to ten per cent.
Who did the costing to find out whether if each of the things which you’ve just
listed to the public were to come true, and there are no guarantee – but let’s
say everything goes your way; foreign direct investment comes into the
country; people are not scared off by nationalization, there’s still an open
question: How does that number six per cent of economic growth from the
current position of not point seven per cent … who determined that number?
MALEMA: We did a determination, but of course with the input of the economists
themselves, the financial experts themselves. We’ve got a group of researchers
in the EFF and we are confident that it will happen because if you listen to
what we are saying, we want the economy to grow at zero point one. These
are two completely different things. I mean, when you nationalize the mines
and deal with illicit financial flows and tax avoidance you are going to increase
the economy in our country.

When you’ve got State-owned bank which is able to allow people to borrow
without making it difficult for people to have access to finance, that will lead
equally to growth.

EUSEBIUS: That’s not gonna happen in one year though right? Because the mechanism
within the State and within the economic cluster, everything there would have
to go right for us to have productivity levels that are so high in key sectors of
the economy that inturn translates to growth levels of six per cent and above.
Everything would have to go perfectly right and even when that is the case, in
terms of how something that is economically useful at point A eventually
translates to very good economic indices, it takes time for that to travel
throughout the economy before you can now go, “Okay, if I look at the graph
there’s an upward trajectory in terms of our economic growth month-on-
month, year-on-year.”

I mean the bottom line is that it is a pipedream to imagine that if you were to
become the government late in May, that two years from now if you sit in my
studio we will genuinely be having six per cent economic growth. That’s just
not gonna happen so in a sense the worry that many people have who may be
ideologically neutral to you overall party is that from a pure economics point of
view, you have the luxury as a small opposition party to sell a pipedream to the
public.

At most, if you had said more humbly, “We will grow the economy by two per
cent by year one; two point five in year two; then maybe we can step up to
three per cent in year three. But you are honestly saying the midway point of
your first term in government as President Malema you can get us to ten per
cent?
MALEMA: Well you need a political will. For instance the cultivation of a State-owned
bank, it doesn’t even take a month. You just have to go and amend one
sentence in the Banks Act. It gives you immediately the power to establish the
State-owned bank, then you run with it. For you to nationalize there is already
an existing State-owned mining company. You just have to , as a start,
capacitate it and ensure that it gives you the necessary output.

So you need the State-owned company that works because the one currently
doesn’t work or they have even forgot that they’ve got it. So you need a
political will that is going to say, “We’ve got this thing in place. Let’s use it.”
And within a year, with a political will you can do it.

EUSEBIUS: But what I’m suggesting is that a critic may say, and I’m playing devil’s
advocate …

MALEMA: Ja, sure.

EUSEBIUS “Your economic analysis in your manifesto helps itself to all sorts of
assumptions that will go your way once you become the government. You know
as well as I that political will is necessary but it’s not sufficient to deal with
State-owned companies that are not performing optimally in terms of what I
would like them to perform.” I mean you talk about the mining sector – if we
look for example at the now couple of decades worth of bungling of Alexcor in
the diamond mining sector, political on day one in office is not gonna be
enough to deal with the financial mismanagement; with the strategic and
operational issues in that particular company.

It will take a lot of time and then we add one more thing onto this and it’s
going to be my last question about economic growth. There also some things
that we don’t know how it will play out in terms of investment. One possibility
that surely is a scenario that you have to confront (and I want you to do it now
because you don’t confront it in your manifesto) …

MALEMA: Sure.
EUSEBIUS: Is that if you nationalize right? And there’s a draft legislation in the first one
hundred days that nationalize strategic parts of the economy, maybe you will
have capital flight and when you have capital flight or disinterest in your
international investors to invest in the local economy because they don’t like
nationalization, even if we think we’re doing the right morally speaking but
they don’t bring their money here, then you will have a contraction of the
economic pie, not growth?

MALEMA: Well that possibility exists but it comes with the territory because not
everybody’s going to like our policy, in the same way nobody likes the current
policy. The current policy which is biased to capitalism still has not attracted
growth to even suggest that any other alternative will not. So it is actually
something that we can implement in South Africa in the same way they’ve
done the Chinese.

There’s no investment flight in China. They are actually growing, yet they own
their strategic means in the economy. So we see many other countries, even
when they’ve not declared that they are towards left politics, they are
capitalist in nature and right, but they are beginning to lean towards the left
because everyone is in a state of acceptance that it has not worked. Even in
countries where they’ve experienced a bit of growth, but it has not translated
in the alleviation of poverty and creation of jobs.

So we are prepared for such things because we know that at least now we’ve
got alternative players unlike in the past, where you only had to rely on certain
forces.

EUSEBIUS: Sure.

MALEMA: Now there are multiple of them and those who are competing – the right, are
actually lenient towards the left.

EUSEBIUS: I can see from Twitter that you are enjoying this dialogue which I’m having
with Julius. I just want you to tell me what are the most important issues you
want me to explore with him. It’s already twenty minutes into the hour. I
would like to hang out with him for many hours because the complexities of
 both his party but also our society’s challenges demand that we do. So why
don’t you do two things for me: If you have a very urgent question, why don’t
you call in and engage him directly? And alternatively, use the hash tag
#MalemawithEusebius, I’ll scan it so that if I don’t get to all the questions, the
ones where I see thematically there’s the biggest bunching of queries I’ll make
sure that I prioritize those ones in the time ahead. 011 883 0702.

Twenty three minutes after eleven o’clock if you’ve just tuned in, we’re in
conversation with Julius Malema, the leader of the EFF and we are talking in
part about their manifesto and what ideas they have come day one of an EFF
government; and so far we have been speaking about economic growth. There
are many other issues. You tell me what you wanna talk about, I’m gonna take
a couple of your calls and Juju can answer them. Please keep it pithy.

Be un-South African and straight to the point for me because many people
would like to engage him. Ndaba good morning!

NDABA: Morning Eusebius.

EUSEBIUS: Yes sir, what’s your question?

NDABA: Morning ntate Malema.

MALEMA: Thobela.

NDABA: So I want to ask, if you were given the option to say today you can get all of
the female votes in the country, but you have to put up a female candidate,
who is ready in your party? In inverted commas the roses, who is ready to
govern today? And if they are, how come they’re not elevated higher than they
are currently?

EUSEBIUS: Okay we’ll come to that question in a second. Tebogo. Hello Tebogo!
TEBOGO: Yes I want to know what’s your stance on immigration and our borders? We
have a lot of foreigners in the township. I want to know what is your position
on that.

EUSSEBIUS: Okay Tebogo. Dwayne good morning.

DWAYNE: Yes sir good morning, how are you?

EUSEBIUS: We are very well Dwayne, what question have you got for Julius?

DWAYNE: Regarding the building of industrial areas in informal or township areas, we’ve
done that before in the past. For instance in areas like … (indistinct) where
they built an industrial area to employ the local people. Those buildings are
basically abandoned because there’s longer business there. So from what I
understand we’re doing the same thing again. What are we gonna do
differently this time because previously we also helped business owners buy
electricity, water and taxes. So what will the party do this time …?

EUSEBIUS: Okay. Now I totally get you. Ndaba asked a question, it there had to be a
woman leader and you wanted to go and do something else, maybe go and
become a teacher from tomorrow. Is there a woman leader that you’d be able
to punt?

MALEMA: Well Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi is a Deputy Secretary General of the EFF. She’s a whip
in parliament. She has been doing very well and the story that she’s not being
elevated, or women are not being elevated is misinformed, it’s disingenuous
because there are different positions. The problem is that we only put
emphasis on the President, forgetting that the President alone will not do
anything in the absence of a collective.

So there are so many women. Here in Gauteng we are led by a capable woman
– Madisa Mashewu. For sure to him that is not an elevation enough. In Free
State we are led by Mandisa Makesini, capable woman in the you know,
judgment of collar. It’s not an elevation enough so women are there; elected
 in the structures of the EFF. I will not appoint women because if I do that I will
be undermining a democratic process of the EFF and therefore I will fit in as a
dictator this time around.

So women get elected on their own, and I don’t think they too would want to
be appointed by someone. They would want to rise through the ranks because
they’ve got the capacity to do so. No one should do them a favour.

EUSEBIUS: There’s an aspect of gender politics I want to explore with you, but I’ll do it a
little bit later. Let’s set that aside for now and answer Tebogo’s question.
There’s a lot of scapegoating that happens in our country and I don’t have a
neutral view on this myself. I really think we are very Afrophobic. What is your
view as Julius? What is the EFF’s view and attitude towards border controls,
immigration and in particular not just foreign nationals but from the rest of the
continent?

MALEMA: Well if the EFF becomes, you know, the government tomorrow, those things of
borders I don’t think we’ll have them because we don’t believe in them.
They’re artificial; they were imposed on us by colonizers; and we are
unwittingly supporting the colonizers because the movement of goods and
persons in Africa before colonizers imposed borders on us was free.

And if you speak decolonization of education or any other thing, you must know
you are including the borders because doing away with the borders includes, is
part of rather decolonization. And if that is going to cost us votes let it be
because these people have divided us; they’ve imposed certain things on us
and we glorify them.

When you are done with controlling the borders and removing the so-called
foreigners from South Africa, you’re going to start fighting a tribal war because
the jobs will still not be there; the woman that you wanted will still not agree
to you (because part of the reason is that “They are taking our women) when
you are scared to propose you blame it on other people even when they left
that woman, it’s not automatic. You have to take an initiative. When they are
gone they are going to say, “No these Vendas and Shangaans, and Pedis …”
EUSEBIUS: Yeah it could be replaced by something else.

MALEMA: “ … they’re too many in Gauteng, they must go.”

EUSEBIUS: I get your ideological critique of the historical origins of borders and there’s a
coherent argument there to be made. What do you say to people who say,
“Okay I find that compelling ideologically and historically Julius. But then how
do you talk to me practically from a State planning point of view? We know for
example (and sometimes it’s used as an excuse but it’s also a reality) that
when you look at the net in-flow of people to provinces like Gauteng and the
Western, that very often you find that State services are under enormous
pressure because it is very difficult to perfectly predict what the numbers
would be.

You find the same in Europe, Eastern European influxes into places like Englad
once they were allowed and they joined the EU, there were many small towns
in England that couldn’t cope, not because they were necessarily bigots but
actually because they were pressurized on finite State resources. How do you
move from your ideological critique of borders to a government that has to
plan with a fiscal constraint?

MALEMA: If we remove the borders and the governments remain as they are in Africa,
and we service a Zimbabwean in Seshego Hospital, we should take that bill and
send to the Zimbabwean government and say to them, “We’ve provided this
type of service to so many Zimbabweans. Therefore you are owing so much.”

EUSEBIUS: And what if the response comes back, “Usile! I’m not gonna give you my Zim
Dollars.”

MALEMA: Well we have to build regional structures including continental structure with
legislation that is binding and which has got consequences because free
movements of goods and persons can’t be be an anarchy. It must be regulated.
The AU, SADC should be able to say, “If you bring the goods that are not
necessarily from Malawi, but China dumped them in Malawi and you bring them
into South Africa as if they are yours, these are the consequences. You are
going to pay.”
 Then if your people get serviced in a particular country and you are given a bill
and you don’t service I, these are the consequences. We must be able to
litigate in whatever court that will have jurisdiction to force the concerned
State to pay us; because we need to build African unity and this African unity
can only be built there are African institutions which have powers that are
binding on member states.

EUSEBIUS: Just a final follow up on that then I’ll need to go to the news headlines right?
Does that mean that once you’ve come into power, would you divest Home
Affairs resources in relation to border controls in order to allow for a free-er
movement of goods and people seeing as you ideological view is that borders
are an historical imposition on us? Because the DA and the ANC, what they
want to do is to increase resources. Would you do the opposite?\

MALEMA: I would increase resources. I’ll actually increase the budget of Home Affairs to
accommodate the outsiders because I’ll get that money in return. Any country
that refuses to pay me, I will say to them, “Then you must know, it’s going to
be unfortunate for me to turn away your residents.”

EUSEBIUS: And that’s an ideological conviction that you have even if there’s a price to be
paid in the short-term with many people who live under conditions of poverty
say in Youville, who are listening from Alex, who say part of the problem is that
we are too accommodating towards foreign nationals? You are saying that you
are so committed to this position as a matter of principle and political history
that you are prepared to live with the edictoral effect that it might have?

MALEMA: Let it happen! I love Africans the same way I love myself. Their pain is my pain
and therefore I should not think I’m better when they are going through what
they are going through. Solidarity amongst Africans.

EUSEBIUS: Twenty two minutes before noon. We still have about twenty minutes left with
Julius Malema and we’re trying to get to understand the thinking of the
Economic Freedom Fighters ahead of the national elections. A lot of the issues
we’ve explored so far; Julius before I go into the next theme can we just also
honour the call from Dwayne.
 Dwayne’s suggestion was that the idea of economic hubs in townships and parts
of our landscape where there’s under-investment, it’s been tried before.
Capital flight has happened; we’ve had de-industrialization. Why would your
proposal, which is not a new proposal in the history of economics, why would it
land differently than those who have failed? And why would the ghost areas in
many of our cities suddenly see a return of capital?

MALEMA: Well there was no capital flight. Most of them were State-owned by
Bantustans. So if you go to Seshego, if you go to Leboakgomo, if you go to
Qwaqwa all of them have closed because government has stopped putting
money into those industries. So we have to go back there an revive them. Not
everything that was done by Bantustans is bad so we need to revive it and give
it support, and get the young people to get into those factories and create
jobs, and give them those incentives.

So those who don’t know who was actually the real player there will think
capital left. No, government just stopped investing in those things. If you go
into provinces these are part of the properties owned by the State including
some old shopping complexes in the townships and the villages. They are State-
owned but they are abandoned and I don’t even think State still knows that
they own those buildings. Some people have hijacked them for sure and they
are just making others pay rent to them and not even to the State.

EUSEBIUS: I’m gonna come back to the lines in a second. I wanna explore one question
with you. And I’ve looked at my Twitter account and what themes are
dominating. I think this is a big issue for you. I think if you can persuade many
people on the following question or them I’m about to explore with you, many
more people will put you on their shortlist for a party they might vote for. I
really think so as an analyst right?

Obviously I don’t have a crystal ball in my pocket. I can’t say these are the
numbers of people for whom this is one issue that turns them off. But at least
anecdotally speaking many people are uncomfortable with what they see or
perceive as being a kind of violence and militancy in your politics as a party,
that they see as a massive turn off.
 I’ll give a couple of examples the I want you to just comment on these,
whether it be Floyd seen throttling a journalist somewhere in the precinct of
parliament; whether it be people in your name coming up with all sorts of rape
threats, death threats against people Karima Brown and many journalists by
the way has just blew up as a new story but there have been many other
examples; whether it’s fighting with mannequins you know with the S&H
protest.

We stack up these examples but the point that I’m trying to make is that
there’s more complexity in your political toolkit than your critics give you. You
are in parliament, you know how to use parliamentary rules, you are not
opposed to legal activism, you’ve used the courts very well.

So you are definitely more complex than many critics would give you credit for
but some people go, “But eish you know what? One day their sophistication and
playing inside the Constitutional democracy rules, and then on another
occasion this guy sounds to me like a little Idi Amin. My worry is I don’t which
Julius will wake up if he becomes President.” Is that a criticism that you
take seriously? And how do you reflect on it?

MALEMA: We’re very angry. We’re a very angry society. Bad things have happened to us
and many people don’t take that into consideration, especially the people who
think they’ve arrived, that they’ve got this or that borrowed to them by banks.
They forget the pain we have gone through as black people and that anger
shows itself from time-to-time and in the EFF we try and control it and manage
it.

I’ve warned long before that one day you are going to experience an unled
revolution in South Africa because of this bottled anger. So the EFF’s
expression is a true reflection of how society feels. And they are not
pretentious. They do not pretend. When you see them they are what they are.
Reject us for who we are, sorry we’re not going to be fake. We’re not going to
pretend. When there’s nonsense there’s nonsense, it must be dealt with and
dealt with decisively so that it doesn’t repeat itself.
 We dealt with MHM, or H&M – whatever the name is, once and for all. It’s
done! But if it was exchange of letters in a modern way and all that we’d still
be talking that nonsense.

EUSEBIUS: So can I ask you this question rather.

MALEMA: And that message did not only reach South Africa it went all over the world.
They were like, “Yoh! Sorry.” Because there are certain people who only hear a
particular language. We’re not promoting violence, we’re promoting an
uncompromising militancy and radicalism and it is in our Constitution. So you
will doubt us and say tomorrow we’ll wake up Idi Amin and all this because you
don’t read our Constitution. You deal with politics through gossip and
WhatsApp exchange. But if you read you will know who are these animals and
you will play very far from them.

EUSEBIUS: To some extent but what some of us do as well, I am a typical voter that loves
you one day, and then I’m disappointed the next day. I don’t have any intrinsic
dislike of you, nor do I have a permanent love affair with you but what voters
like me do is we judge you not by what you say in your manifesto. We judge
you by your actions. So for example as a gay person I go, “Oh my god, here’s a
manifesto …” (and this is a real example for those of you that haven’t seen it):

Here’s one political party that has a whole section on LGBTI and then I see
Floyd and I think to myself, “Uh uh. No Juju you can’t want to appeal to me as
a vulnerable queer voter and then your Deputy is a performance of hyper
masculinity and toxicity in that moment. If you want me to judge you on what
you say on paper, I would be an idiot! I have to ask myself what is the content
of your political program in terms of how you actually behave? Do you actually
recognize that there’s very often a gap between what you say on paper very
progressive articulation of women, queer politics for example, and then you’re
reproducing the same problem as a straight white man that can’t control his
rage when he’s engaging a politician – the example of Floyd?”

I mean what do you say to someone that gives you the … that’s criticism from a
place of not hating you – that’s criticism from a place of love …
MALEMA: Absolutely.

EUSEBIUS: I want that gap between your behavior and the manifesto to close.

MALEMA: Yes and after he does that he immediately says, “Look, I’m sorry. I apologize. I
should have done it differently.” He’s a human being and remember as a gay
person that we are brought up differently. We are now trying to do away with
that nonsense education we received that “You are a man and anyone who
gives you nonsense you must go and deal with them physically and show them
that you are a man.” We don’t only do it to other men, we do it to women.

I do it myself. I sometimes find myself in a compromised position and then my

consciousness must then help me that, “No you can’t do that” because we are
battling between what we were taught in the past and what we are now
exposed to, which is the future and a very good future for South Africa. So
from time to time we’ll show those mistakes and to pretend that we’re perfect
would be disingenuous and people should not like disingenuous people.

EUSEBIUS: Sure.

MALEMA: When my wife goes at me; when she says, “Ja men are trash” I say, “I agree.
I’m thrash too but baby, I’m trying to be a different person. I’m trying to work
out myself out of that nonsense we were taught as young people growing up in
township, in the Africa families.” You know all of those things.

EUSEBIUS: And reporters, there’s complexity here right? You’re gonna see the headlines at
twelve: “Juju says he’s trash”. Just a very quick one because I wanna go there
and then back to the lines right? Have you as the leader of the party or the
brains-trust of the entire party of which you are a part, have you theorized the
place of violence in an EFF government?
 You are prepared to use the tools inside the Constitutional democracy that we
designed but you have also just given a moral defense of rage and I accept that
moral defense. I think rage is underrated and it’s usually people who benefit
from historical wrong who don’t like our rage. But there’s also a philosophical
and a practical, political question of the place of violence in an EFF-led
government. What would be its place?

MALEMA: There won’t be a place for violence under the EFF government. You can’t
justify violence, even after I’ve said what I said. Floyd’s actions are
unjustifiable. When I saw the debate in Cape Town where EFF people were
engaged in some fight with some other people, I immediately took a call and
called the Western Cape chairperson. I said, “You can’t do it. It doesn’t matter
the amount of provocation, you can’t do it; and because you can’t do it the
best way is to walk away and write to the IEC because now they will complain
about you.”

As if I predicted, they’ve already complained about them. I told them that. You
know very well, I used to socialize – go to this or that place and all that, but I
always find myself in a compromised position there because someone will pull a
woman in a different way and I get myself involved – “No you can’t do that.
Not in our presence.” And majority of those which I’ve come in between are
our African brothers who pull our women in a very bad way and I say “You can’t
do that” and they turn around; and someone else starts now whispering in his
ear that, “No he’s so and so you can’t do that.”

And because I’ve experienced this so much what do I do? I just stay at home.
I’m like, “I must be in a familiar environment to avoid engaging myself in
violent activities.” So where violence raises its ugly head, a Fighter should
know that it is time to leave. If you don’t have the necessary strength to
separate people and to calm the situation down you can’t find yourself in it
because it’s unacceptable in the EFF.

EUSEBIUS: So for me Julius there are two topics that are your biggest bug-bears: the one
is violence and now you’ve theorized, we’ve dealt with that. The second last
question speaks to another big issue and I wish we had more time. You have to
confront the reality that there are many people who go, “I don’t understand
the complex laws around corruption and what have you. I blinked and then I
missed what happened to On Point Engineering etc. But man! I just have this
 funny feeling in relation to the VBS story, maybe even going far back to when
he was in the Youth League. This guy is just as corrupt as these people like Ace
Magashule.”

How do you respond to people who think that even though you are the most
articulate in the political landscape on black rage, that you have a credibility
problem because they think that there are clouds over you head in relation to
corruption, going way back, and now with all the series of stories about VBS.
How do you get the public to be convinced that there is no fire just because
there seems to be smoke.

MALEMA: Well, I accept that the cloud is there and there’s nothing I can do about it. I
appeared before Court and many a times when I was called to Court I went. I
never asked for my charges to be struck off the roll. One day I walked into
Court and the Judge was very angry – “But this guy has been coming here all
the time. All you do is to postpone him and I’m not going to postpone him. I’m
removing this case from the roll. You’ll come back when you are ready.”

And I was shocked because I’d expected to be cross-examined about such

issues. There is no adverse finding against me by the Public Protector and her
recommendation that the Hawks should deal with the matter, I thought it gives
me an opportunity to now clear my name and they’ve been saying they will be
coming, they will be coming. Adriaan Basson has now given the new NDPP
instruction to prosecute me. I’ve got no problem at all. I’ve got nothing to
hide. I’ve got no problem at all. When called upon I will go and explain myself.
And the reality is that I’m nowhere in VBS. I don’t get to be mentioned
anywhere in VBS

EUSEBIUS: What have you done internally in the party to try and make sure that you, of
your own accord assess whether or not money and moneys have illicitly flowed
into the coffers of the party …

MALEMA: No, no, no!

EUSEBIUS: Whether advertently or inadvertently.

MALEMA: In the party we have done that. There is no money which has come into our
coffers.

EUSEBIUS: Can you open the books for the public?

MALEMA: The books are there because, ankere we audit the books and then we submit
them to parliament. So I said in press conferences that any journalist that
wants to go through the EFF books is more than welcome; can make
arrangement with Lee-Anne. Lee-Anne will open the books. The only thing we
can’t allow you is to take pictures but we want you to satisfy yourself because
you can’t go out showing our enemies what is our strength financially.

EUSEBIUS: Okay but I can, after this show …

MALEMA: But you can come satisfy …

EUSEBIUS: Well I’m not a reporter, I’m a talk show host and an analyst but you are happy
for me to speak to a reporter with my colleagues at EWN and we can elect one
and they can do it?

MALEMA: Absolutely you can do that without any fear or favour, ja.

EUSEBIUS: We are … the last question again is too big for one minute but take us into your
confidence. A lot of politicians are struggling to articulate something and I’ve
got sympathy for all of you because it’s a new era for us: What the principles
are that will guide you in coalition talks should no one get an outright win,
either nationally or provincially. I had the same conversation with Bantu
Holomisa, I quoted back his words to him – “We will keep the ANC out of a
municipality” then suddenly pragmatic politics take over and you find yourself
with all sorts of arrangements, not on the basis of overlapping political
ideology that you share but because in the real world, when no one gets an
outright win pragmatism tends to trump principle.
 But everyone is keeping their cards close to their chest instead of doing what I
think voters are entitled to, which is before the election you tell us very clearly
what will guide you when those talks happen, if they happen.

MALEMA: It’s the land. We need the land; we need free education, not fake and half free
education; we need the airport of Cape Town to be named after Winnie
Mandela; we’ve just added a new demand yesterday that the Deputy Mayor of
Umgeni Municipality must be removed if the ANC is going to talk to us because
she arrogantly refused to take the demands of the residents.

We will talk to everyone and we will achieve what we want. Look at DA. We
don’t have the same policy but they are insourcing the workers based on the
EFF policy. Why? A coalition is give and take. It’s not one man’s policy. Even
the EFF, if it finds itself in a coalition it will have to implement some of the
things which are contradictory to its policy. Why? It’s not an EFF government.
It’s a coalition. So we need to be deep like that because simplify things for too
long to an extent that Mzwandile Masina forgets that the ANC is not
government in Ekhuruleni.

When you talk to Mzwandile (he’s my friend), I say, “How many municipalities
have you lost?” He counts all the municipalities except his. So that’s a mistake
we make with coalitions.

EUSEBIUS: We’re running out of time so I’m bringing it home, to Gauteng. Let’s say you
are kingmakers. Both of the other two parties get around forty five per cent
(I’m just making the numbers up) and you are the critical one who gets to
decide effectively what that arrangement looks like. What will form your
choice of who to go into bed with?

MALEMA: The amendment of Section 25 to allow the expropriation of land without

compensation. That’s what is going to guide us and we will agree that, “We are
going to choose you now and constitute national government. In three months
time you should have amended the Constitution. Failing which we’re folding
our arms.”

EUSEBIUS: Clear. Thanks for coming in.

MALEMA: Thank you. Thank you for having us.