HARARE – EFF leader Julius Malema Thursday took a swipe at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and regional bodies, AU and SADC, for continued failure to call out President Emmerson Mnangagwa over tough rule that has brought fear among his Zimbabwean opponents.
The fierce pan Africanist was speaking at his party’s 10th anniversary celebrations in Johannesburg.
Malema, who leads South Africa’s third largest party, said both AU and SADC have reduced themselves into a club of elites who have no time to confront the myriad problems haunting African peoples.
“African Union is a meeting of friends who do not even call each other to order,” he said.
“They can meet with a dictator who has just killed his people and do not even mention it.
“So, we can’t allow the African Union to continue working the way it is working.
“We are talking here about SADC; we have a problem in Zimbabwe.
“These members of SADC don’t call the government of Zimbabwe to order because it is a group of brothers.
“That government is violating people there.”
Malema, also a South African legislator and member of the Pan African Parliament, said Mnangagwa’s opponents were being impeded from holding meetings under Zimbabwe’s draconian laws.
“No one in SADC has raised his voice to say what is this,” he said.
“So, we cannot have these regional bodies and the continental body including Pan African Parliament by the way which are not biting on countries that are engaged in wrong activities.
“What is wrong with President Ramaphosa calling President Mnangagwa to order; it would be coming from a good place.
“They are all brothers; they are all Africans, they all speak, we assume for the interest of Africans.
“So, we can’t have a situation where we have regional bodies, continental bodies that become a meeting of the elite without concrete solutions to the problems confronting the people of Africa.”
His comments follow SADC’s failure to take a stand over Zimbabwe’s disputed August elections which were dismissed as fraudulent by both SADC and international poll observer missions.
Malema is not the first opposition leader within SADC countries to scold the regional body for dereliction of duty while Mnangagwa rides roughshod over opponents and his people.
Last month, Namibian opposition leader Bernadus Swartbooi took a swipe at SADC for embracing Mnangagwa even when its own trusted observer mission had lifted the flag signaling poll theft by the Zimbabwe incumbent.
