Ronald Lamola tears into EFF 'supreme leader' Julius Malema and deputy Floyd Shivambu

ANC deputy president hopeful and justice minister Ronald Lamola on Tuesday focused his Sona debate speech on the EFF's top two leaders, calling leader Julius Malema an “EFF supreme leader” who makes his music and others dance to it.

Lamola was responding to Malema’s attack on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address.

The minister coupled his offensive against Malema with criticism of EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu, who spoke before him during the debate at the National Assembly joint sitting at the Cape Town city hall.

Shivambu had taken aim at Ramaphosa’s assertion that it was not government that has the capacity to create jobs but rather the private sector.

To back up his claim that the president’s statement was “factually incorrect”, Shivambu made reference to China, saying the state had played a central role in that country’s development in the past four decades.

Lamola believes that this is false.

“What honourable Shivambu has just said is a distortion of the highest level on the conceptualisation of the role of the state in the economy,” said Lamola.

“China has socialism with Chinese characteristics and the Chinese characteristics allow for private sector direct investment into the economy in China. In Singapore, that country was built by the allowing the private sector to invest and allowing foreign direct investment,” he added.

“It is a complete distortion by honourable Shivambu to say it was only the hand of the state. Even in China, the big corporations are private sector corporations that accept foreign direct investment.”

Lamola turned his focus to Malema whom he accused of being a dictator.

The first shot was triggered by EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi’s attempt to pose a question to the minister in the middle of his speech.

“I have no time for honourable Ndlozi, deputy speaker, the supreme leader has taken all the minutes. The only thing he [Ndlozi] can do is disrupt, speaker; that is his only chance of speaking,” said Lamola as he delivered the first blow.

Lamola further attacked Malema, accusing him of trampling on the constitution using revolutionary rhetoric.

“Attacks against the constitution disguised through revolutionary-sounding phrases remain counter-revolutionary and are against the people,” said Lamola.

“It is a language aimed to replace the institutions with a personality cult, such as the supreme leader of the EFF where only one person thinks, speaks and acts of behalf of the entire organisation.

“He now wants to speak on behalf of the entire nation. We must not allow that as South Africans because the struggle is about the people.”

Lamola delivered the final blow on “Malema the supreme leader of the EFF”, charging that he “displayed the highest levels of ignorance” by claiming that government was not procuring goods locally.

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