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ANCYL, vets in war of words

LIVID: MKMVA president Kebby Maphatsoe addresses the media at Luthuli House yesterday. PHOTO: ELIZABETH SEJAKE
LIVID: MKMVA president Kebby Maphatsoe addresses the media at Luthuli House yesterday. PHOTO: ELIZABETH SEJAKE

INSULTS flew thick and fast at ANC headquarters, Luthuli House, in Johannesburg yesterday when the ANC Youth League squared up against the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association over Julius Malema's latest comments.

During the press conference, the MKMVA called for the ANC's top brass to "summarily" expel Malema from the party following what it calls Malema's "public tirade" against President Jacob Zuma.

On Friday, Malema accused Zuma of suppressing freedom of speech within the party.

He said: "It is under President Zuma that we have seen the youth in the ANC being traumatised; the youth in the ANC expelled from their home; the critical voice of the voiceless being suppressed.

"We have seen under President Zuma democracy being replaced by dictatorship."

Malema was speaking at a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg to celebrate the ANC's centenary.

Yesterday, the MKMVA said Malema was not bigger than the ANC, and in turn accused the youth leader of being a dictator himself, saying according to media reports, Malema has gone out of his way to traumatise the youth league by disbanding regions that were opposed to his views, and also expelled those who publicly challenged him.

MKMVA chairman Kebby Maphatsoe said: "We have seen recently that what he has been doing is not on behalf of the ANC Youth League. In fact, people who are traumatised are ANC Youth League members themselves, because they can't utter any statements against (Malema) because he will summarily dismiss them."

Immediately after Maphatsoe's comments, Sindiso Magaqa, the youth league's general secretary, hastily called journalists into a press conference in the same building, and said the MKMVA is not an ANC structure, and that it was using Malema's name to get media mileage.

"Let's clarify one thing. The MKMVA is not a structure of the ANC. That's why even in congresses they don't vote. They can speak so much ... at the end, they don't vote," he said.

Magaqa then went on the offensive, attacking MKMVA leaders personally.

"We must know that not everyone was a soldier (of Umkhonto we Sizwe). Some of them were cookers (sic) there. Now that's why they don't possess the maturity and organisational clarity because they were sleeping under the trees (in exile). They were cooking."

Earlier this month, the youth league threatened to approach the Human Rights Commission and the Equality Court after the MKMVA's KwaZulu-Natal branch reportedly said Malema would have been shot dead by an ANC firing squad in exile because of his utterances.

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