Malema to AfriForum: 'Maybe it's time for us to engage face to face'
EFF leader Julius Malema opened a hornet's nest on Thursday when he tweeted a message to AfriForum suggesting a meeting take place between them.
Afriforum is very provocative, maybe is time for us to engage face to face.
— Julius Sello Malema (@Julius_S_Malema) September 6, 2018
The lobby group has received widespread criticism after its submission to the Joint Constitutional Review Committee on land expropriation without compensation.
This is what I said in Parliament yesterday: Expropriation without compensation: The NDR has failed https://t.co/Z6hL5iATlb
— Ernst Roets (@ErnstRoets) September 7, 2018
EWN reported that AfriForum's deputy CEO Ernst Roets said MPs were "drunk" on ideology. He also said the idea that land had been stolen from black South Africans was not factually correct.
The comments received a backlash from political parties including the IFP, UDM, ANC and EFF. News24 quoted EFF MP Tebogo Mokwele as saying "you took everything that belongs to us. This is why you are so arrogant to us. You think we are inhuman."
On Thursday night, AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel appeared on the eNCA show Let's Have it Out, with legal expert Pierre de Vos standing in as the host.
Kriel dismissed comments that AfriForum was a "whites only" organisation and said it had represented several cases involving people of colour.
Malema's calls for a meeting drew mixed reaction on Twitter. The post had received more than 533 comments, 1,000 shares and 3,700 likes at the time of publishing this article.
No CIC,
— Thabo Makaota (@masthibo) September 6, 2018
Do not give irrelevant people a platform to shine.
We are busy with serious things here, we don't have time for hendrik verwoerds nieces and nephews.
Wena just focus on your Presidency next year my CIC.#MalemaForPresident pic.twitter.com/jj1mQXKHxH
@Eusebius I’m white and Afrikaans but I have never identified as an Afrikaner (for many, many reasons). But still I feel the need today to distance myself from Afriforum’s self-serving historical revisionism. It disgusts me.
— Stefan Ferreira (@stefanf28) September 7, 2018
So if Afriforum says they took empty land... Can we take the land when they're not home? It's mos empty
— Farah C. Fortune (@fcfortune) September 6, 2018
Afriforum are arrogantly undermining their own cause by insulting MP's in Parliamentary hearings on Chapter 25.
— Simon Grindrod (@SimonPGrindrod) September 6, 2018
They are alienating goodwill & the opportunity to present a reasoned case.
Ernst Roets has done himself and his members a disservice.#afriforum #LandExpropriation