ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has come out in defence of ASA president Leonard Chuene.

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has come out in defence of ASA president Leonard Chuene.

Malema yesterday threatened Nedbank with a consumer boycott for withdrawing their sponsorship and lambasted the Deputy Minister of Sport and Recreation, Gert Oosthuizen, for calling on Chuene to resign following the Caster Semenya gender testing debacle.

Malema blasted those who have been pushing for Chuene to resign and called them opportunists who should be ignored. He also told a press conference that there was no need for Chuene to apologise for lying about the gender tests done on Semenya before she took part in the Berlin meeting last month.

Malema insisted that Semenya is a woman because there is no hermaphrodite in Sepedi.

"Hermaphrodite, what is that? Somebody tell me, what is hermaphrodite in Pedi? There's no such thing, hermaphrodite, in Pedi. So don't impose your hermaphrodite concepts on us.

"You are either a woman or a man. When a child is born you say it is a baby girl or a boy. We have never heard in the village a child being announced, 'we were given a hermaphrodite'," Malema said.

"Why should we be told today our children are hermaphrodites? She's a girl and why should we accept concepts that are imposed on us by the imperialists?"

Malema also threatened to mobilise people against the bank.

"Let them withdraw. We'll engage them and we'll expose them for who they are. We'll tell them the truth of why they are withdrawing, and we'll mobilise the South African society to know what Nedbank is."

Nedbank media relations manager Greg Harwood said: "We are not going to comment about what Malema is saying. The timing is unfortunate but we have been negotiating for sometime."

Harwood said they were not happy with the manner in which ASA had run some of the road running events where there was no water and insufficient marshals for runners.