Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema said he’s not bothered by threats by US tech billionaire Elon Musk, for him to be declared an international criminal.
“I have not committed any crime against anyone, except to say let’s restore the dignity of a black person,” remarked Malema, who was speaking at the St. Paul African Apostolic Church Thanksgiving Ceremony in Soweto, on Sunday afternoon.
Musk recently posted Malema’s video on X, and calling for sanctions against him, while US President Donald Trump signed an executive order cutting funding from South Africa.
The unfazed and robust Malema said he’s not bothered by the threats.
“You can be guaranteed fellow South Africans, I will never be bullied by Elon Musk or Donald Trump for because I have never done any crime to anyone.
I attended an auction yesterday in Rustenburg organised by Pieter Du Toit.
In that auction 95% of people who attended were white people and I sat with them throughout the day (from 11:00am until 18:00pm) wanting to demonstrate to Musk and Trump that I am with the people you are saying I want to kill.
Why would I sit with this white people if I want to kill them, why do you make me an international criminal for asking for dignity of Black people,” questioned Malema.
According to the EFF leader, Trump and Musk are not abreast with the challenges facing the majority of South Africans and they are acting from an ill-informed position.
“Today, Trump and others speak very bad of us, not because we did anything wrong.
They hate us because we want our land back, and they’re even questioning what we want to do with the land.
Because we want to build more churches than shebeens, that’s why we have a problem in our society, we need more churches than shebeens.
So today we are being threatened with sanctions because we said let’s expropriate land without compensation and give it to our people, and give it to the church,” said Malema.
Regarding the deployment of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers to the Democratic of Republic of Congo, Malema again called for their withdrawal from that country.
He said this must be done with immediate effect as the soldiers are under-resourced and incapable to deal with the better resourced and Rwanda supported M23 rebels that have captured the eastern city of Goma.
“We are not refusing our soldiers to be deployed to the DRC, we are simply saying withdraw them because we are not ready to go anywhere.
Once we have prepared ourselves enough, we can go to the DRC.
When you send soldiers without arms to the warzone, you’re sending farmworker to a warzone,” added Malema.
