Malema must 'hand back land'
2012-10-16 18:45
Johannesburg - Expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema must hand back all the land he owns to the Khoisan, AfriForum Youth said on Tuesday.
"Malema's ancestors also migrated southward and arrived here in South Africa without land," chairperson Charl Oberholzer said in a statement.
"For this reason, we are of the opinion that Malema cannot lay claim to the contributions that white people have made to South Africa."
The organisation was responding to comments Malema made during a wedding in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe's Herald Online quoted Malema as saying youths in South Africa were calling for whites to surrender land and mineral resources they held because "when they came from Europe they did not carry any land into South Africa".
"What we are asking is for them to surrender our minerals because they did not come with any minerals. We want that land and those minerals for free, because they never paid for those minerals."
Malema said whites committed murder to get land.
"Actually they killed people to get that land and those minerals. We are not going to give them money when we take the land back, because it will be like we are thanking them with money for killing our people.
"We will never do that. Little did they know that we are not scared of blood. We are scared of defeat. We don’t want to be defeated, but seeing blood is not what we are scared of, as long as that blood delivers what belongs to us [and] we are prepared to go to that extent."
Oberholzer said Malema was "romanticising violence".
"History is complex and to spread a distorted version of it simply amounts to vandalism against every South African who wants to make a positive contribution in this country," Oberholzer said.
"As young people we are here to stay and we will not run away from our problems either. No community should step back when it comes to defending the right to peaceful co-existence."
- SAPA
