Students love Julius

[caption id="attachment_38678" align="alignright" width="300"] Julius Malema[/caption]

Julius Malema yesterday compared South Africa's land claim challenges to a pimped-up car.

Speaking to students at Stellenbosch University, the Economic Freedom Fighters leader said South Africa's "colonisers" were like thieves who stole a car, pimped it up, then demanded compensation when they were forced to return it.

"If somebody steals your car and goes to Gugulethu and decides to add mag wheels, includes new leather seats and nice music, and you say: 'Policeman, here is my stolen car' and then a policeman says: 'Yes it is your car, but it has got some improvements, so you will have to pay to cover the costs,' that cannot be correct.

"That is what they are saying about our land: that there is investment, so you cannot just take without paying. Why should we compensate for stolen land?" asked Malema to loud applause.

He spoke at the invitation of the university's Political Science Student Association to a packed auditorium.

The maverick politician told the lively audience, which cheered and applauded him, that South Africans had been misled by the "liberation movement" into thinking that once they achieved "one man, one vote" their problems would be solved.

"We were told that once we had a black president we would live like white people," he said.

"Our struggle has always been that we want to live like white people and live with them."

Malema asked the students to curtail their applause because he had run out of time.

After his speech he faced a grilling by students who asked him questions ranging from his tax problems to how to tackle structural racism, and his party's attitude to tax breaks for businesses.

Malema said blacks needed to own property in order to gain self-confidence.

He said his party would keep demanding that President Jacob Zuma "Pay back the money" spent on his Nkandla home.

The EFF leader said the most important victory from the question-and-answer session with President Jacob Zuma in parliament this week was that the ANC leader committed Police Minister Nathi Nhleko to saying by the end of this month how much money Zuma should pay back on the Nkandla project.

-Aphiwe Deklerk