Women are better leaders than men: Malema
Women are better leaders than men‚ EFF leader Julius Malema said on Wednesday at the party’s memorial service for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
“There is no woman who has started a World War One [or a] World War Two. There is no woman who has ever sent people to go and bomb other nations‚ because he wants oil or minerals from that. Always the unreasonable ones: Men. George Bush: Man. Donald Trump: Man.”
Malema addressed supporters in Brandfort‚ a Free State town where Madikizela-Mandela spent several years under apartheid-era banishment orders. The EFF chose the location to draw attention to the home in which Madikizela-Mandela stayed during her time in Brandfort. The provincial government has been criticised for failing to deliver on plans to turn the home into a museum.
Malema told the EFF leadership to let women flourish or risk repeating the “sins of the ANC”.
“Winnie did not do anything wrong to the ANC‚ including a tyre and a matchbox … The ANC policy was every sellout must disappear. They did not only disappear here in South Africa‚ they disappeared even in exile under O.R. (Oliver) Tambo‚” Malema said in Brandfort in the Free State.
“Why is there no one reminding us here of what (former defence minister) Joe Modise did in the camps? What (former SACP leader) Chris Hani did in the camps? What O.R. Tambo did in the camps?”
Malema said Madikizela-Mandela’s detractors criticised her past because she was a woman doing what was “supposed to be done by a man”.
“If it was a man that was alleged to have killed Stompie [Seipei]‚ who was an impimpi (police informer or spy)‚ that man would have been saluted and be given all titles: Commissar‚ commander‚ the fearless one.”
Madikizela-Mandela was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping and being an accessory in the assault of Seipei. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a suspended two-year sentence on appeal.
Thousands flocked to Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Wednesday to pay tribute to Madikizela-Mandela. She died last Monday at the age of 81 at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg.