|
SOUTH Africa’s ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema said on Friday that President Robert Mugabe must step down.
Malema met Mugabe earlier this year during a visit to Zimbabwe.
He has also praised Zanu-PF’s land redistribution programme.
Speaking at the ANC Youth League’s annual convention in Midrand, Malema also warned ANC leaders they could be removed at any time.
“Inasmuch as we support the revolutionary programme in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe must hand over to those young chaps so that we engage with (them) on the same level. We will never agree with permanent leadership,” Malema said.
A key proponent of the nationalisation of mines and land reforms, inspiration of which he found in Zimbabwe, Malema however insists leaders must respect popular will.
“You must be careful, you’ll be on the streets if you don’t respect the power of the masses,” Malema told Youth League delegates at the convention where he received an emphatic new mandate.
“Sometimes power makes you drunk.”
Meanwhile, Zanu PF Youth’s Secretary for External Affairs, Tongai Kasukuwere told the conference that land grabs in South Africa as well as the nationalisation of mines should be conducted “now” or “never”.
Kasukuwere who is brother to Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere, whose indigenisation policy is blamed for scaring away investors in Zimbabwe hogged the limelight at the Youth League meeting for talking tough like Mugabe.
He called on South Africa’s ruling party to ignore criticism from farmers and opposition political parties about the likely effects of nationalisation on the nation’s economy, and to carry on the task of righting the wrongs of history.
“As the new generation of Africa, we must seriously consider making our history by taking what is rightfully ours,” Kasukuwere said.
“I am talking about taking land from the white minority in order to correct the past imbalances as well as nationalising all mines and natural resources of your country.”
“When blacks make millions of dollars whites call it corruption, but when the whites make the money themselves, they call it investment,” he said.
“Imperialists have tendencies of undermining Africans, and we should say to them ‘NO’!” At this, more than 3 000 delegates erupted into applause.
Kasukuwere said Zimbabwe was vilified left, right and centre when it embarked on its controversial agrarian reform programme in 2000, which left the country experiencing gross food shortages.
“After 10 years of economic hardships we are now beginning to reap the fruits of the land reform,” he said.
“If you embark on nationalisation of mines, you will definitely reap the results. The imperialists would not leave you alone, but impose sanctions for alleged lawlessness and breakdown of the rule of law.”
Malema threatened that the people of South Africa would dismiss ANC leaders who do not implement the electorate’s tasks and demands.
This follows Friday’s resolution by the ANC Youth League to nationalise all mines in the country as well as embarking on an agrarian reform programme similar to that of Zimbabwe — Caj News/Online
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
