Politicians From South Africa

"We might be imprisoned, we might go to jail, we might be subjected to fines. Every time such rulings are made against us, you must know that it is not a ruling against the leadership, it's a ruling against the struggle for the land. … You must know that when you are EFF, you are the enemy of the Rothschilds, you are the enemy of the Ruperts, you are the enemy of the establishment. The establishment is white monopoly capital, it's the army, it's the police, it's the courts, every institution that existed 300 years ago, that's what an establishment means. … Not so long ago, they gave a judgment and said, 'according to the new dawn'. How can a judge use a political speech in passing a judgment? You use the same language of politicians as a judge and want to be respected. … We cannot have judges that seek to impress politicians. Did you ever ask yourself a question: 'What would happen to this country if the judiciary is captured?' Then we are gone. It is the end of this country. … The judiciary is about to be captured, I'm warning you now and you'll know, in the past five years, I've never misled you. … There was a judge called Judge Nugent who had a meeting with Pravin Gordhan before Gordhan appeared in that Nugent Commission. The judge did not disclose that he met a politician before that politician came into the commission. … Why are the judges meeting politicians? … South Africa be warned, … something wrong is happening to the judiciary."

"Trevor Manuel has always served the white capital, now he is accused of triple conflict of interest, exactly what we raised earlier. Trevor can kick and scream and win the court cases, but facts don’t change. … Why did you interview other candidates if you knew [your relationship with Edward Kieswetter]? What if you were too hard on the other candidates? … The reason why they want SARS so desperately is because it is the only weapon they can use against their enemies. SARS is being used as a weapon to fight opponents of white monopoly capital. … They can come for us at any time."

"They [the DA] refused with their votes [in DA-led coalitions]. They don’t want to vote with us but they want us to vote with them. … We cannot keep on voting for people who won’t vote for us. It’s done. It’s finished. … We […] took a decision that we are no longer working with the DA in all municipalities of South Africa where the DA requires the votes of the EFF. We’ll also not vote with the ANC."

"When the whites are beating you up at the farms and you are being undermined by whites in the newsroom, you come here. But when it comes time for voting, you are not there. … South Africa chose the government they want."

"[Mnangagwa is either ignorant or had bowed to pressure from the white supremacist world.] We are of the firm view that Mnangagwa is either deeply misinformed about the real causes of the crisis in Zimbabwe, or is simply capitulating to pressure. Either way, this treasonous act of paying white settlers money that Zimbabwe does not have will not resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe, which is essentially a political crisis resulting from years of mismanagement, at the centre of which Mnangagwa features prominently."

"Xoli Mngambi: That is the former president Kgalema Motlanthe who says that if there is any more friction in that town of Senekal it could spark civil war. Are you going to listen to him? Malema: So be it. We are in this mess because of people like him, who allowed whites to undermine us like that. You think we can listen to people like him? You think we can listen to Mbeki? To Zuma? To Mandela? We'll never allow that. This nonsense must come to an end at some point. This whites should know that we are not step-children in this country. This is our country, we too belong here. And if going to Senegal will cause a civil war – if a man exercises his constitutional rights, that will lead to a civil war – so be it. I am not talking here from the comfort of my couch in the NewzRoom Afrika offices. I'll be in Senegal myself. I'll be leading from the front. Do what you want to do. What soldiers ... why should we be scared of retired soldiers, when we are not scared of them when they were soldiers? When they legitimately carried guns to kill black people, we confronted them with stones. Let history repeat itself. Let us confront the same people our parents confronted. If that is going to be the case, let it be. We are not going to live in fear here because we think white farmers are former generals. They can go to hell. Murderous generals. Xoli Mngambi: Mr. Malema, I put it to you that as a responsible leader, you are the third biggest party in this country. Your utterances right now, you sound like a person who is spoiling for war, not the protection of democracy, that you claim to go and do there. Is that what you essentially want? Malema: What is war? When a person says I am going to Senegal to defend a building with my body? I have never told you of AK 47. I have never told you of [?]. You are talking war? When I defend myself against white racist and terrorist. If you are scared of them it is none of my business chief. You are all alone, [when you say you are being] scared of white people. I am standing up to them."

"Well, we send messages of support and condolences to all victims of murder in SA, including the farm manager. There is nothing in our law called farm murder. Murder is murder, it is criminality and should be attended to as such. ... A criminal must rot in jail, once found guilty. We have no interest of people who go around killing innocent people, particularly civilians who are trying to make an honest living. So we really are not going to Senekal to sympathise with a thug. We are going there to defend our democracy, our constitution, which is under threat by racist, terrorist farmers."

"What type of a human being are you white man to stay in a house with an electricity? All you can do is to wire to the [...] workers of the farm a simple electricity so that they can have light at night. Their children too must study. ... We want the children in the farms to own the farms. And they can only own the farms if they are educated. ... So that we can guarantee a better future for our children. What kind of a human being are you white man to deny these children a light to study and make their future bright? .... All we are asking for is the bright future of our children. We don't want our children to travel the same journey their grandfathers travelled."

"If South African police want a fight, they must declare it. We will treat them the same way we treated them in the 80s. We will not only fight them at the picket lines, we will go to their homes and fight them in their own houses, with their own families. [Applause] We are not scared of police. They think this uniform gives them some superior power. We'll see you after you take off the uniform at night at home, when you are about to eat pap. ... Bloody coward. ... We'll come for you one by one at your own comfort zone. We will teach you that no-one can defeat the power of the masses. Not a policeman, not a police state, not a military state, not a dictatorship, once the masses have taken a decision, no-one will defeat them. Racism in South Africa is going to fall – they like it, or they don't like it. It is just a matter of time, we are going to go after racists everywhere, and there will not be a home for racist[s]. They will on their own take a flight or a ship out of South Africa, because they will no longer feel comfortable in South Africa. Let's not make home for racism. Guys, there is no any other way of fighting racism. Racism is violence. It must be responded with violence. That's the only way we are going to stop racist[s] in South Africa."

"Because you must get Malema and Ndlozi guilty through any means necessary, by hook or crook, it doesn't matter. We don't have a case but let's concoct, because perhaps those pictures that are removed are now proving something else which is not in the best interest of AfriForum and the ANC. And what is interesting is that the ANC through the NPA, they are pursuing the same interest as the AfriForum. And it has been the same for quite some time that the ANC shares similar ideological perspective with AfriForum. It comes as not a shock to us, because they even had a press conference together at some point in Gauteng. So you got the right wing with the so-called former liberation movement working together to eliminate what they perceive as a political threat, not through honest political contestation, but through manipulation of law enforcement and abuse of the courts, because politically you can't defeat your opponent. ... we were clearly provoked ... the onus are on them to prove that we were not supposed to be there. ..."

"Sophie Mokoena: The Pan-African Parliament, there has been a contestation Mr Malema, on the powers and the function of the Pan-African Parliament but also whether it is effective enough to deal with issues of governance on the continent. Malema: Well, that's what we are calling for as Pan-African Parliament, that we must have legislative powers, that we must have the capacity to play an oversight role on the executives in the continent, hold them accountable, and we can only do that if countries ratify the protocols which will allow this parliament to become a fully legislative continental body which will hold executives accountable. A lot of presidents aren't comfortable with that because they do not accept being held accountable, and those are some of the people who thrive on violation of human rights, dictatorship and stealing the government money and resources of the countries without being held accountable. They do that with impunity because they know that they control and run those countries as if they are personal properties, but with a continental body like PAP being given legislative powers to hold executives accountable, they will no longer be in a position to do all the shenanigans they are able to get away with now."

"Sophie Mokoena: Mr Malema, some say it was ill-discipline. What was happening? Malema: Well, a member of parliament from Mali has been misbehaving. He moved from his side to our side, started fighting with a Zimbabwean lady, from there he came to me. Every time people disagree with Mali's position on rotation, he bangs tables and he doesn't stop. So when I asked him to keep quiet so that we can listen, he started being aggressive and threatened to kill me, and I said, "I won't do it here, I won't kill you here inside, I will kill you outside, so, stop threatening to kill me inside parliament." So it was a reaction. If a person says to me he will kill me you can't give him roses. I told him, "I will kill you." Mokoena: ... is it necessary really? Malema: I will kill him. He can't threaten me, to kill, I will kill him. I will repeat it anywhere. No-one threatens me. ... My life is more important than any other thing. I will defend myself. I didn't go to where he was sitting. He has been bullying everybody here. He can't bully me. No-one can bully me and threaten to kill me. I said to him, "out of respect for this thing I'll kill you outside, I won't kill you inside parliament." I respect this house. Today he came to me, we smoked a peace pipe and everything is fine now ... The problem here is that the western countries [of Africa] are refusing to accept the principle of rotation. And when they disagree with you, they bully you and do all types of intimidation. ... Mokoena: What is your message [to the youth] after this video? Malema: ... The youth of Africa [...] have tolerated nonsense for a very long time, especially from the so-called elders who are ruling them in an autocratic manner, in a manner that if you disagree you get killed, in an undemocratic manner, where women and children are being raped, [...] people who are opposing the status quo, as a way of punishing their opponents. ... That is why in this country we are able to put a stop to a potential nonsensical situation, because of our attitude [that] it doesn't matter how dangerous the situation can be, if it is not in the best interest of our people, we are going to deal with it. Mokoena: The tension between the Francophones and Anglophones does not project a good image of the continent that is trying to unite. ... Why can Africans not speak in one voice, particularly on issues that are of interest to the continent? Malema: The Francophones are still admiring their colonizers, they still worship the symbols of France. Actually they see themselves as French, and we have to do away with that. ... They seem to be thinking that because of the numbers of their countries they must have dominance over us, and they must serve in the best interests of what France requires them to do. ... A rotational principle helps to unite a continent, in a sense that every region feels that it is part of this parliament."

"... these rich white families in South Africa, they are the face of the land criminal. That was committed in this country. That's why we are here to say to Rupert: Your riches come out of stealing from black people. Your riches come from the exploitation of black people. Our people work in the wine farms and you don't pay them anything. Instead you pay them with bottles of wine and alcohol because you have no regard for black people and black dignity. So you are not rich because you are smarter than us, you are rich because your forefathers committed a black genocide and stole our cattle and killed our leaders and took everything that belongs to us. The unbanning of the ANC, when they came back from exile, they came here in Stellenbosch to hold the first national executive committee meeting in a farm owned by the Ruperts. That day they came, Mandela out of prison, exiles returned, but guys we need to have our first meeting. It was held in a Ruperts' farm. And then how can you say the ANC will not sell out when their first historic meeting was held in the Ruperts' farm. The person who lead such facilitation and processes is one of our own, our own black brother Trevor Manuel. He's the one who has been working with them even before the liberation. He is one of them. That is why Trevor and them are rich like that and you can't touch them."

"Russians have not done anything wrong to anyone. You have a problem, go and talk to NATO. It is the one that provoked Russia and Russia it is well within its right to defend itself. So the Russian foreign minister was at home. ... So, we are happy that they saw it befitting to respect us and to come to us as a way of saying we respect you and we want to give you a some form of an explanation as to what is really happening in our country, and all of that. We can't say the same about this one of Treasury of the USA, who was coming to steal our minerals and our wildlife. I don't know what she was doing in those game farms and all of that, and the Reserve Bank, and she came here to monitor their puppet if it's following the instructions of surrendering the sovereignty of South Africa. So, America can never be welcomed here in South Africa and the African continent because we now when they come here, they are coming to check what more can we steal and finish off this continent. So, she was even going to Mpumalanga to go and run some symposiums or something on just transitions, and how renewables work. You can see that she was preparing to indoctrinate our people to abandon coal so that they can enjoy to build their economies with our coal. ... So, she was not welcomed here."

"That man's credentials were supposed to be withdrawn. There are lots of protocol channels that are established for those types of concerns. He could have utilized those channels to go raise his concerns. But to create such atmosphere for our country, to create such doubt and smear our country in a manner he did, and he still has not come out to apologize. ... If there were guns that were given to Russia, it was a good thing. I would have done the same as a president of the Republic. ... Russia must be given a practical support, because when we needed one they didn't give us a non-alignment position, they didn't give us this neutral nonsense position, they gave us arms."

"Comrades, we want to make sure that BRICS is strengthened, and BRICS is an alternative to Europe and America. We are with president Putin, and we want to say to president Putin, it is not us South Africans who refused you from coming into the country, it is Ramaphosa, the coward Ramaphosa, who could not guarantee that we will not arrest Putin. We are Putin and Putin is us, and we will never support imperialism against president Putin."

"The statement by Donald Trump is offensive and undermines our sovereignty, and is a reminder that our reliance on foreign aid and foreign direct investment surrenders us to the will of imperialist[s] who use money to dictate the economic and policy direction of Africa. We want to make it categorically clear to the president of the USA that we are going to expropriate land without compensation and pursue legislative measures to do so and no threat will stop us. His misinterpretation of the expropriation act which is a mild and cosmetic intervention is an assessment of a measure which is going to be pursued through the amendment of our constitution as South Africans and there is nothing he can do to undermine our independence. The EFF reiterates its position that we must build state capacity, build a strong agricultural and industrial nation which will not depend on the West, and intensify trade relations with progressive nations such as China, Russia and nations within BRICS who do not use foreign policy as an instrument to impose their will or bully other nations into submission."

"Donald Trump is not saying anything we have not heard from white people. ... I still have to meet a white person who support expropriation of land without compensation. So why are you shocked? ... I don't have time for nonsense, I expected this. And more, backlash is going to come. If South Africans are not ready to expropriate the land because they are scared of sanctions, they are scared of backlash, then don't vote for the EFF. Because you vote for us, we are going to expropriate land. And Donald Trump will come for us, and Britain will come for us, and EU will come for us. ...for everything good comes the pain before. If you are not prepared South Africa to take the pain, then forget about the land. ... We know that the first response will be killing. They will kill us for that. There is a group of white rightwingers who are being trained by Jews in Pretoria to be snipers. ... So we know that death is the first price that we are prepared to pay. The second price we are prepared to pay for this land is poverty. They will close taps. But if there is a conviction, ... and not sloganeering and public opinions, then we must be prepared for everything. It is a war. We must be prepared for Donald Trump and all of them, we are not scared of them. ... There is no white genocide here, it is an absolute rubbish. ... There is black genocide in the USA. They are killing black people in the USA. There is black genocide here in South Africa. Black people are being killed all the time. ... We are not going to be distracted by anyone. Only death will stop us, not Trump, not poverty, not sanctions. ... We know the consequences of what we are asking for. ... So Afriforum is the embassy of the USA. If you want issues to reach USA, then go to Afriforum. Then you shall get a proper response. ... We are not scared of Afriforum."

"How do you say you must expropriate land and give people title deeds? Our people ... won't eat title deed. Here is a paper called title deed, yet you remain poverty stricken, and here is a man with money, who says to me: Give me that paper, I give you the money to eat now. They will take the money. You are setting our people up for failure when you talk title deeds. ... Our people are going to use those title deeds as surety, and they will not be in a position to pay their debt. ... So they are going to give you the land, and come to buy it from you, close to nothing. ... RDP houses are being rented out. The owners of the RDP houses went to squat somewhere."

"Julius Malema is a devotee of the Goebbels/Stalin/Mao rulebook on propaganda which preaches if you tell a lie enough times, people will eventually believe it. Witness the EFF leader’s racist ranting about who should own South Africa’s land [...] stirring murderous thoughts in revolutionary breasts. But Malema’s self-righteous belief that he can force expropriation of legally owned land has been made once too often."

"This fool is misinformed and does not have any insight with regard to business ownership in KZN. Why does he not talk about Huletts and other big, white capital and business in the province? The issue of land distribution must begin with Huletts, why is Malema silent on this? Is the Indian community an easy target in Malema’s political stage performance? Workers are aware of their rights these days and know about labour courts and their right to CCMA if there are issues around labour matters. There are very few who are not familiar with this recourse. Instead of playing on racial tensions, why doesn’t Malema encourage workers to challenge their working conditions through proper structures? I am disappointed in Malema and will not support his political agenda, as he is clearly causing dissension and division in our society. A true leader does the opposite."

"During the State of the Nation Address debate, EFF leader Julius Malema (a Marxist) accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of making empty promises regarding the [principle of land expropriation without compensation] issue. Malema is a dangerous individual who encourages farm terror and murder. [...] For far too long the hard left of the ANC has been taking control, their policies shaped by the EFF because they are losing votes to the EFF's rhetoric of hate, divisive racism and a promise to under-educated South Africans that all will be well if they just take the white people's farms and businesses."

"He must do what he must do and we will do what we must do. We are a party of principle, we believe in property rights and there's no way that we can support that, so if they want to blackmail us into doing it, they will have to remove us."

"The EFF’s remarks are blatantly racist and offensive."

"It’s time we condemned black people’s racism. Malema prejudicing Trollip on skin colour is nothing but racism. He can make whatever political decision but race is no justification for differentiation in this context."

"When an individual or a political party tables a motion in a meeting or the National Assembly and the motion wins the day by an overwhelming majority, what is the reason for attacking those who voted against it? Is this not intolerance? It is clear that if the EFF won elections, those who voted against it will be in serious trouble."

"My blackness gets questioned by other blacks when I disagree with Julius Malema. I didn't know that my identity as a black man depended on whether I agree with a man who is a communist, gave us Zuma, bankrupted Limpopo and uses race politics to poison the minds of our youth."

"I'm going to say something that I know I will be attacked [for]. We mismanaged the Julius Malema phenomenon. … We were quick to expel people that we should have spoken to them. … If you check the knock-on effect of the members that left us to join the EFF, that's exactly what we have lost in terms of voter participation. People didn't leave the ANC for the opposition, they left for a far left movement or a movement that felt the ANC was not strong enough. … Our incapability to manage internal differences, unfortunately, affected us. For me how we mismanaged those internal differences remains the key part that led us to lose power in those two metros."

"Mazzotti and Phillips are no choir boys and you [i.e. Malema] must be aware of it."

"I make a challenge to him today, if you believe what you say around the police not doing their job and being at war with you, I challenge you, Mr Malema, to give up your security detail that is provided to you by the state – you are the only opposition leader who has a SAPS security detail – I challenge you today, to give up your security detail. ... If you are calling on the public to attack police officers, then I think that is a disgrace that you yourself would be sitting with police protection, and expect people to attack the very people that you are relying on to be safe. And I think it is hypocrisy of the highest order."

"The humble man reached in his pocket for his sacred book, and began to read. It was this world alone that was certain."

"Cry the Beloved Country was another Uncle Tom's Cabin [1852]- in Africa. The failure in imaginative comprehension of the African character in European fiction lies in the fact that the African is not seen in an active causal-effect relationship with a significant past."

"Like many others in the United States, South Africa came into my field of vision when I read Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton's best-selling novel. Reading Cry the Beloved Country may have been the first time I caught an objective glimpse of myself, my family, and the land we cherished and considered ours (although we were sharecroppers, my paternal grandparents had owned land). I began to understand that we were settlers on stolen land, with the native people separate and invisible, that realization dawning against the distant drum of the civil rights movement coming ever closer to home. Yet it was not a sense of guilt I felt; how could I, a dirt-poor half-breed myself, feel guilty in any terms not proscribed by the Baptist preacher? What I felt instead was a sense of enormous responsibility, and that felt liberating, made me feel in control of my destiny, made me feel I could change the world and make a better place for people like me to live in, liberation of the damned as Frantz Fanon put it."

"....for the black moods and the angers and the cold withdrawals that robbed her of the simple joys of her quiet and humble life."

"A word from you is twice as severe because it comes from you."

"The light of the body is the eye, and when the eye is true then is the body full of light, but when the eye is evil, then is the body dark."

"Why a man should have great strengths and great weakness I do not understand. For the first call him to honour, and the second to dishonour; and the first to fame and the second to destruction"

"For a man can be happy and free, and be cast down by a word. And a woman can be in the depths of misery, and be lifted up by an asking for forgiveness. So one goes from joy to dejection, and hurt to exaltation, and certainty to doubt, as when with some summer storm the whole world is dark and sombre, till suddenly the sun breaks through, almost at its setting, and bathes tree and grass and hill in green and yellow light, the link of which, as the English say, was never seen on land or sea."

"...if man takes unto himself God's right to punish, then he must also take upon himself God's promise to restore."

"...when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive."

"But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences."

"...And the heart is black too, and the world is black, and one can tell oneself that it will pass, but these are only words that one speaks to oneself, for while it is there it is no comfort that it will pass."

"For what can men do when so many have grown lawless? Who can enjoy the lovely land, who can enjoy the seventy years, and the sun that pours down on the earth, when there is fear in the heart? Who can walk quietly in the shadow of the jacarandas, when their beauty is grown to danger? Who can lie peacefully abed, while the darkness holds some secret? What lovers can lie sweetly under the stars, when menace grows with the measure of their seclusion?"

"I say we shall always have native crime to fear until the native people of this country have worthy goals to work for. For it is only because they see neither purpose nor goal that they turn to drink and crime and prostitution."

"...Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom."

"He had come to tell his brother that power corrupts, that a man who fights for justice must himself be cleansed and purified, that love is greater than force. And none of these things had he done. God have mercy on me, Christ have mercy on me. He turned to the door, but it was locked and bolted. Brother had shut out brother, from the same womb had they come."

"I do this not because I am courageous and honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul."

"...let us sell our labour for what it is worth. And if an industry cannot buy our labour, let that industry die. But let us not sell our labour cheap to keep an industry alive."

"There are voices crying what must be done, a hundred, a thousand voices. But what do they help if one seeks for counsel, for one cries this, and one cries that, and another cries something that is neither this nor that."

"We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money."