MULDER AND MALEMA’S TWITTER UTTERANCES RECKLESS

24 February 2016

The Office of the ANC Chief Whip condemns the reckless and irresponsible conduct of both parliamentary leaders of the FF+ and the EFF, Corné Mulder and Julius Malema, which threatened to incite public violence. Both leaders yesterday took to twitter calling on their supporters to “crush” each other in their reaction to the ongoing volatile protest situation at both the universities of Pretoria and Free State. Mulder had initially called in his tweet for his supporters to “unite and crush” what he labelled “fascists and radicals trying to impose their revolution on us”. Malema retaliated, equally threatening with “we will crush all of you if you want to come with that stinking attitude”.

By inciting violence amongst their supporters, both senior parliamentarians have displayed shameful and disappointing lack of leadership which violates the provisions of the Constitution which they have sworn to uphold as public representatives. The situation at both universities call for calm heads and leadership particularly from elected public representatives rather than senseless war talk that only serves to fuel racial tensions amongst Black and White students. As the ANC asserted yesterday, racial wars and racial tensions do not in any way bring us closer to the type of society we need to collectively build.

It is unfortunate that at the time when the young people at these institutions are looking for sound leadership and wisdom from elected representatives to bring about solution to the current situation, the two saw it fit to take to social media to spew inflammatory utterances to further escalate the violent tensions. The disgraceful conduct of these two MPs shames Parliament; brings into question their leadership qualities and dishonours their roles as senior parliamentary leaders.

The ANC denounces such reckless conduct whenever it rears its ugly head. Previously, we condemned ANC MP Bongani Mkongi for posting inciting utterances on social media and called him to immediately apologise and withdraw. His conduct now is the subject of both internal ANC disciplinary process and parliamentary ethics committee process.

We will consider reporting both Mulder and Malema’s conduct to the ethics committee if they do not apologise publicly and withdraw their reckless utterances.

Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Whip, 24 February 2016