DA welcomes investigation of Malema speed ticket claims

It was most welcoming this afternoon to hear Deputy Minister of Transport Jeremy Cronin's assurances that Julius Malema's alleged attempts to sidestep a speeding ticket is being investigated.

It is essential that this matter is investigated thoroughly, and that if any wrongdoing transpired that the law is allowed to take its course.

For these reasons, it is encouraging to read Mr. Cronin's comment that "we too in the department of transport department have... read the reports about the alleged behaviour of the ANC Youth League president, and we are going into the matter... We want to assure South Africans that none of us are above the law. These are allegations... but we are seeking to establish what exactly happened."

The deputy minister made the comments in response to the member's statement that I presented to the National Assembly this afternoon, a copy of which follows below.

MEMBER'S STATEMENT:

The head of the ANC Youth, Julius Malema, has apparently asked traffic police in Limpopo who had the unmitigated gall to stop him for speeding, "Don't you know who I am". The Democratic Alliance thought we would utilise this opportunity to assist him in answering this vexed question.

He is the man who believes there is one law for South African citizens, yet another law for him. He is the man who will slap a neighbour who has the temerity to ask that the music at his housewarming be turned down at 3 in the morning. He is the man who has turned hate-speech into an art form, who has insulted the Premier of the Western Cape in the basest most libellous of terms, indeed who has so very many cases pending against him that I have quite lost count.

Malema is a man who citizens at grass-roots level believe acts as a mouthpiece for the President - who said he would fire Thabo Mbeki, and indeed any other ANC Member sitting in this House should he get the urge, the man who says he lives by economic policies that have bankrupted countries and been discredited for generations and while the intricacies of the policies escape him, he is extremely capable of parroting the violent militaristic rhetoric that accompanied them.  He is a man whose claims about rape victims quite literally take one's breath away.

Referring to the incident where his Idi Amin-like arrogance had him throwing his not-unsubstantial weight about in Limpopo: this was because he was caught at a speed trap and such is the ANC today that he failed to do what Cyril Ramaphosa did when he was caught speeding, apologise and pay up - but instead the threats began. Indeed this man has offered to kill for the President, in fact kill most anyone who gets in his way - that he's come to sound like a rather rotund version of the Wizard of Oz's Tin Man.

Is it true that he phoned the Limpopo roads MEC Pinkie Kekana, and the General Manager of Traffic Walter Sathekge - did his threats intimidate the police to the extent that they gave him a free pass for speeding...and if he wasn't speeding, why did they stop him?

Will this matter be investigated? Will the police be rewarded for doing their jobs without fear or favour - or will they be sent into oblivion like the other unit who used to act without fear or favour - the Scorpions?

Malema's ego and contempt for the law the rest of us must respect, is unparalleled, and one has to ask the other Honourable Members in this House today how it is they continue to allow themselves to be represented by someone who genuinely wishes Kader Asmal's death? Is this, to quote the President, someone you honestly believe is a ‘leader in the making - worthy of inheriting the ANC"?

Is the ANC of Nelson Mandela as dead as the youth league wishes Kadar Asmal to be, because that certainly seems to be the case and if so how do we explain the moral bankruptcy our children will inherit, where spin doctors work 24/7 to turn a failure in woodwork into the biggest success story for our future? Is this truly the best the ANC can do?

Statement issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of police, November 3 2009

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