Former Africa National Congress Youth
Leader, Julius Malema, was charged with money laundering on Wednesday
but emerged from court unbowed to attack South African President Jacob
Zuma as the “illiterate” leader of a “banana republic”.
Expelled from the African National
Congress for ill-discipline, Malema has capitalised on wildcat miners’
strikes to emerge as a champion for impoverished blacks whose lives have
changed little since apartheid ended in 1994.
At a ten-minute hearing in Polokwane,
capital of Malema’s native Limpopo province, prosecutors accused the him
of “improperly” receiving 4.2m rand ($514,000) in a conspiracy
involving state tenders, Reuters reports.
Having ditched his trademark Che
Guevara-style black beret and t-shirt for a grey suit and red tie,
Malema emerged to play the crowd with an irreverent roasting of Zuma,
who faces an internal ANC leadership election in December.
“He can stick the charges up his ass,”
Malema said in the native Pedi language, to cheers and laughter from
around 1,000 supporters hemmed in by police and razor wire in Polokwane,
350 km north of Johannesburg.
Prosecutors, he said, were simply taking
orders from Zuma to “catch this boy”. “In South Africa, a banana
republic, being next to Julius Malema is a criminal offence,” he added.
“I’ve never been part of any criminal activity. I will never be part of any criminal activity,” Malema said.
“They are sent by Jacob Zuma because
Jacob Zuma knows nothing – the illiterate Jacob Zuma,” he added. “I’m
unshaken. I’m not intimated by nonsense. They are wasting time.”
There was no immediate response from the
presidency to Malema’s public tirade. The ANC rejected his allegations
of meddling in the legal system as an “insult to law enforcement
agencies who are totally independent of government”.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Zuma dismissed Malema as being “just talk”Culled form THE PUNCH
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