South Africa's Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party leader Julius Malema in Parliament, Cape Town, on February 13, 2020.
| Sumaya Hisham | AFPWeekly Review
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Julius Malema: Africans are not beggars
What you need to know:
- About 60 or so years after independence, much of Francophone Africa is still under the neocolonial yoke of Paris, including their ‘sovereign’ so-called central banks: Malema
Economic Freedom Fighters party leader Julius Malema addressed students at Lukenya University during the launch of the Pan-African Institute last week. Below are excerpts from his lecture.
What does Julius Malema think of President Ruto’s policies towards the West, and his dalliance with Europe and America?
Julius Malema – I cannot locate him (ideologically) these days. He made many election promises but we do not know where he stands any more.
The other day, he rolled out the red carpet (to King Charles III), the monarch of Mau Mau murderers.
This colonial King showed no historical remorse, made no mention of reparations, but still got salutes from the army, who are the inheritors of the Mau Mau.
Such a King still holds himself superior and thinks of the government (of Kenya) as a junior partner. Our mindset here is still wholly colonised …
On the issue of Climate Change, as the least of polluters, should Africa be paid by the Industrial West?
We are not the beggars of the world. What beggars belief is that our largest tracts of land, our minerals, our human resources, are still in the hands, largely, of the Industrial West, benefitting Euro-American economies even as the Black African languishes in extreme poverty.
Take the French, for example. About 60 or so years after independence, much of Francophone Africa is still under the neocolonial yoke of Paris, including their ‘sovereign’ so-called central banks.
This is why I am celebrating the recent wave of revolutionary movements in places like Mali and Burkina Faso that are overthrowing French puppets, although the French still finance military coups in places like Guinea-Conakry to place their puppets in power.
What do you think of the BRICS bloc, de-dollarisation and an African Development Bank to brook Western hegemony and create a multipolar global system?
I do not like the idea that when Russian President Vladimir Putin calls African leaders for a meeting to Moscow, almost all 54 of them follow each other like sheep to go and bow before the power of Putin.
Or that China, with all its economic muscle, can afford to treat the entire continent of Africa like its 35th province.
Of course, the West is no better – was it in America that we saw Biden put all the African leaders in a school bus (to be driven to the United Nations’ General Assembly)? London does not have a single gold mine, but its Central Bank has huge gold reserves to back up the dollar.
One day when the continent is one economic zone (the way the Moroccan king envisioned it politically in 1961 in Casablanca, and his grandson Mohammed VI does so today in economic terms), and backed by our vast minerals, the one Africa currency (the Afro?) will be one to reckon with in the world markets.
What do you say about trading blocs and the free movement of people? Are visas relics of colonial rule?
First, allow me to say that nobody wishes to live their home to go and look for work in a strange land, but economic circumstances make people go to such lengths …Having said that, there is no reason why we do not have a trans-continental line, running from the Cape up to Cairo.
A man from Lusaka should not need a visa to be in Johannesburg. It is what your CS Alfred Mutua (now in Tourism and Wildlife) recently, eloquently said. Rwanda has shown us the way.
Ruto promised to do away with visas for us (South Africans), and in December, I will sneak back into the country and simply present my passport – and tell the people at the airport that I am simply back home.
You say you are a Pan-Africanist and that your EFF Party is for continental brotherhood, yet South Africa has a lot of xenophobia. With the elections soon coming up, what do you make of this strange sentiment?
As a Pan-Africanist, I have always been guided by the negritude of Senghor, the African socialism of Nkrumah, the black consciousness of Biko, the Afro-intellectualism of Fanon and DuBois, the black diaspora of Gavey, the ujamaa of Nyerere and African renaissance idea of Mbeki.
When you are an African, anywhere you are in Africa is already home. We are already despised by many on other continents as being inferior, so how do you even begin to kill your fellow African in the name of xenophobia and vigilantism (Operation Dudula)?
As the EFF, we have made it clear that we do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants in our country. We are all one.
Africans! And if you feel you want us (the EFF) to support your xenophobia as a citizen, I am sorry, but we are not that desperate for your (bloody) vote.
The DRC is in a shambles, a long post-Colonial mess riven apart by the greed of the West. KDF is there, the SADC is there on peace-keeping missions, but it just keeps falling apart. Is the AU just another talk shop like its predecessor, the OAU? Is there a political solution to the long civil war in the DRC?
It is 100 per cent correct to say that the DRC’s long civil war is fueled by outside powers so that as the different parties fight, the exploiters (who also provide the arms) keep extracting minerals cheaply from the DRC.
In the London Stock Exchange (LSE) alone, you find companies that hold 1.5 trillion worth of mineral resources from Africa alone.
About 6.6 billion barrels of oil worth US$276 billion, 80 million ounces of gold, 3.6 billion tons of coal, diamonds, platinum, cobalt, and all sorts of resources, most that would make the DRC very rich, but the common Congolese is a poor person.
The Portuguese still control a lot of the wealth of our neighbours Angola and Mozambique. Our ancestors, especially around ancient Ghana, were gathered, brutalised, chained and send off on huge ships to be enslaved.
Many did not make it – the sick and weak, still in chains, or even just for easier navigation of the vessels, were thrown overboard still chained to be eaten by sharks or become bones at the bottom of the cold Atlantic.
The rest were taken to be broken in the sugar, cotton, banana and corn plantations of the Americas, from Georgia to Sao Paolo. It is the cries of their souls that have driven me to be a Pan Africanist, and we cannot be true Pan Africanists if we do not heed the enslaved cries of our brethren in the DRC …
Onto world matters, what do you make of the Israel/Palestine war?
I have no problem with the pregnant Jewish mother in Jerusalem or the kid in Tel Aviv. I have a huge problem with the Israeli State that has practiced apartheid against the Palestinians for decades and decades.
I have a problem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right Zionist extremists in government, now driving a mass murderous policy against the Palestinians.
As a Pan African, we must identify with the Oppressed of the World. The Mau Mau were seen as terrorists. Nelson Mandela was seen as a terrorist.
When revolutionaries fight for their land, they are dubbed as ‘terrorists’, even when the State they are fighting is terror itself. I remember when I was nine years old, Boer police bursting into our shack and turning things upside down, to the extent of stripping my mother.
It is what started me off on this journey, not just of politics but also worldwide Pan-Africanism. And it is a journey of unity I hope to someday complete.
