EFF leader Julius Malema on Wednesday made astonishing accusations against business mogul Johann Rupert and his family, saying the family owned everything — including the judiciary. 

“This company of Rupert owns everything. It owns Absa, it owns FNB and Standard Bank. If they don’t want you, you will never own a bank. How can the Ruperts just own everything? All of us here when we woke up — without fail — used a product of the Ruperts. Either a toothpaste or toothbrush or soap. Whatever you want to think of, these ones have got their hands in it,” said Malema.

He was addressing party members picketing outside Rupert’s farm in Stellenbosch.

The protesters implored Rupert to release land and reveal all of his offshore bank accounts.

Malema was scathing of Rupert’s company, Remgro.

“The insurance companies, they are there. The wines, they are there. The luxury goods, they are there. Cheap or expensive, they are there. Even the air we breathe ... if they want they can contaminate this air and kill all of us. These ones are capable of anything,” he said. 

On judges, Malema said the Ruperts owned a golf estate in Mpumalanga and whenever he held a golf day there, up to 20 judges turned up.  

“Any kind of judge, they are there,” he said. “So, you offend the Ruperts and one day you make the mistake of going to court, you are likely to meet his friend by the bench. They will say ‘we have been waiting for you’. They own the law firms. They decide who becomes an advocate, and who doesn’t become an advocate.

“They decide who becomes a professional engineer. A lot of our black brothers and sisters go around saying they are engineers. No, there is a council of engineers that accredits professional engineers. They decide how many blacks get in there,” Malema said. 

He said the Ruperts also had a say in who became a chartered accountant.

“They decide how many black CAs are going to come in there this year,” he said. “The only thing they lost control of is the doctors. They used to decide how many blacks are going to be doctors. Now we are beating them because the Bantu education is no longer the only reliable thing. There are all sorts of platforms and information where we are educating ourselves and go back to them and defeat them in the fields they don’t want us.”

The EFF handed over a memorandum of demands to Rupert’s representatives.

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