Don't vote ANC or IFP as Mandela and Buthelezi are gone, says Malema

EFF leader Julius Malema has appealed to elderly voters to stop voting for the ANC and the IFP because of loyalty to Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, saying they should be allowed to rest in peace. 

“The elders, we implore you, don't do what you did in previous elections by saying 'we are voting for Mandela, we are voting for Shenge'. They are no longer there, allow them to rest in peace,” said Malema. 

On Thursday the EFF leader took his campaign trail to hotly contested KwaZulu-Natal, which will be the second-biggest voting bloc in the May 29 elections.

Malema addressed hundreds of supporters at John Dube Stadium in Inanda, outside Durban, where he asked voters to punish the ANC at the polls. 

While asking the elderly to vote EFF instead of for the ANC or IFP, Malema sought to make distinctions between Mandela, who is believed to still bring loyalty votes to the governing ANC and its leader Cyril Ramaphosa. 

“There is no Mandela who stole money and put it in the mattress and sofa, there is no Mandela who stole Covid food parcels, they dug a million of graves for us during Covid because they said we were going to die, we survived ANC attempted murder. On May 29 you must remind them you wanted to bury us but (now) we are going to bury you,” he said.

He said his party will ensure access to land, decent housing, free education, decent healthcare and jobs. 

He warned voters not to be “fooled by the ANC promises” of jobs, the availability of electricity and the recently signed National Health Insurance (NHI) Act.

“Ramaphosa in parliament said the government is not responsible for job creation, but he comes to you and says 'I am going to create 4-million jobs'. Don't be fooled by these people. Only a government of superior logic (EFF) can create jobs.

“Today we are going to elections, jiki jiki there's no load-shedding, they are trying to bribe you for votes, after elections they will hit you with stage 8,” Malema said. 

He said an EFF government would provide clinics that will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week in every ward, with an ambulance per clinic and hospitals with adequate medicine.

“Even this NHI they have launched is a fraud. It says when you are sick you must go to your nearest health facility [but] there are no longer health facilities in SA. There is no single hospital that exists properly in SA, that's why the gogos cry when you take them to public hospitals because they are going to die there, our hospitals are mortuaries,” he said.

Malema added that a vote for the EFF would be a vote to restore the dignity of South Africans. 

Malema will continue his KZN campaign on Friday, in Pietermaritzburg and Newcastle.