‘Where were you?’ — Ramaphosa hits back at Malema’s accusations about his anti-apartheid record

President Cyril Ramaphosa has told EFF leader Julius Malema to source the facts about his political background and the role he played in the formation of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which he co-founded in the 1980s.

Ramaphosa went as far as offering to sit with Malema to provide information while calling out Malema for making politics personal, including dragging family members into his attacks on the president during debates.

On Friday Malema implied Ramaphosa was an apartheid collaborator.

On Monday the president was replying to the opening of parliament debate.

Speaking off the cuff in SePedi, XiTsonga and TshiVenda, Ramaphosa addressed Malema directly and said: “Malema, you and I need time to sit down and speak. I want you to give yourself time for us to sit down and speak politics, specifically contemporary history which I see you do not fully understand.”

He said Malema was confused.

“I want us to sit down so when you speak here, you talk about things you understand.

“Two years ago, you stood here and insulted me, and insulted my father and said he was a policeman. I am proud to be a son of a policeman, a very good policeman. I have never insulted your grandmother or even yourself because I respect you.”

Calling for mutual respect in how governance and political issues were debated, Ramaphosa said: “It’s important, Malema, that as we debate, we play the ball and not the man. You spent a considerable amount of time playing me, the man.

“What is important in building this country is playing the ball of development.”

On the labour movement, Ramaphosa recommended Malema reads books and speak to people such as Gwede Mantashe, who was a miner and among the first members of NUM, James Motlatsi, who was a president of NUM, as well as Director Matlala, Mondli Gungubele and many other NUM members who got together in December 1982 in Klerksdorp to form the union.

“As they formed that union, they said we are building a shield and a spear that is going to improve the lives of mineworkers, and they did exactly that.

“Five years after formation, being the largest union in this country, they embarked on a 21-day strike and stopped the entire mining industry in this country. And you call that a sell-out position.

“That was not,” said a visibly irritated Ramaphosa.

“The question I would ask is: ‘Waar was jy, where were you?’”

In his speech on Friday, Malema implied that Ramaphosa was an apartheid collaborator,  citing his government’s relationship with the DA among his reasons.

“We grew up being told some of you were collaborators but we gave you the benefit of the doubt. It was said in this house that you personally wrote a letter to the apartheid police accusing your fellow comrades of planting communist ideas in your head and we refused to believe that story.

“It now makes sense that despite the apartheid regime being so oppressive against all freedom fighters, you peacefully and uninterruptedly attended university and you were given your first job by the ambassadors of apartheid capitalism and colonialism,” said Malema.

“Without a hustle you bought your first car and house with the assistance of the Urban Foundation, which was anchored by the Ruperts and the Oppenheimers while your comrades were sleeping under trees in exile and languishing in jail.

“We asked ourselves how you form a union of mineworkers without being a mineworker. (Now it’s clear), you were a conveyor belt between workers and the super-exploitative mining capitalists in South Africa after the Oppenheimers and Anglo-American had concluded black mineworkers must be organised.”

Malema said “elders in the struggle” have made allegations in parliament that throughout the struggle against apartheid, Ramaphosa was insulated from any form of arrest and harassment by the apartheid system but that towards the end of apartheid, he placed himself at the centre of the negotiations for the end of apartheid.

“No one knows how you arrived to be at the centre of the negotiations of our liberation.

“It now explains why so many compromises and capitulations were made, leading to a situation where economic power remained in the hands of the white minority, leaving black people with meaningless political power. We can today confirm it was pure infiltration by forces of darkness.

“Like many people in South Africa, I stood here in this house and said we will give you the benefit of the doubt, believing the allegations against you being a collaborator might not be true.”

Malema said he was giving his account because of Ramaphosa’s activities, actions and decisions over the past few weeks since the ANC’s electoral defeat, which “demonstrated that in the battle against neo-apartheid and neocolonialism”, he chose the side of the oppressors in the same way he (allegedly) did in the past.

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