Malema Defends EFF’s Demands

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema has defended his party’s push to have a portion of the apartheid national anthem removed from the current anthem.

So far, the EFF has reached sufficient consensus with the Inkatha Freedom Party to collaborate in many hung municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal.

The EFF has served every party it has engaged with, with a list of its conditions before it will enter into a coalition government.

With the African National Congress, it wants a state bank to be created, the reserve bank to be nationalised and for “Die Stem” to be removed from the national anthem and all this has to happen within 12 months.

Party leader Julius Malema said that this was not an attempt to exclude Afrikaans.

“We’re not saying remove Afrikaans, we’re saying remove ‘Die Stem’. We can get people to compose an Afrikaans version, a nice, new Afrikaans melody,” Malema explained.

But none of this is likely to come to fruition as the EFF’s talks with the ANC have collapsed and the red berets maintain there’ll be no resumption.

“After their juniors failed, then they sent in [ANC treasurer-general, Paul] Mashatile, a crook of note… we have long held the view that we will never talk to him and have made it clear that in any talks with the EFF, the ANC should never send him, but they did,” said Malema.

Despite ActionSA saying it will be able to agree with the EFF who say they are still at the bargaining table to talk to leader, Herman Mashaba.

“Mashaba is politically illiterate and we will be patient with him,” said Malema.