Malema slams delegates for all-male top five

JOHANNESBURG - EFF leader Julius Malema has expressed his displeasure over his party’s failure to elect women at its Eastern Cape elective congress, and the snubbing of its only female provincial chairperson in the Free State in favour of a man.

Addressing both conferences, the Eastern Cape one earlier on Sunday morning, and the Free State conference in the afternoon, Malema said he was not proud that voters had felt no women were worthy of being in the top five. Five men were voted in at the Eastern Cape congress, no women, and they (the men) don’t see anything wrong.

“Are you saying in a conference of 1 400 delegates, there are no women to qualify to be in the top five?” he asked.

While applauding the Free State for at least electing two women to its top five, Malema said it was deeply disappointing that the province had now opted to snub the party’s only female provincial Chairperson, Mandisa Makesini.

“The whole of SA has no woman chairperson now.” Malema added that although he was deeply disappointed, he respected the delegates’ constitutional right to nominate whoever they pleased. “That is why I do not come and address you before you elect your leader, so that you don’t say I have influenced you.

“But now that you have been elected, I will sleep well, knowing that I have told you that you have committed suicide on your own by not re-electing Mandisa.”

South Africa’s biggest problem was the killing and raping of women, and the country was battling to find a permanent solution to this problem, Malema said.

“Did the EFF in Free State discuss that and, if they did, what is their resolution on how we are going to resolve it?

“Two provinces are meeting the EFF today - one elects the top five, and all of the top five are men.

“They are saying these men, five of them, must sit and go and resolve the killing of women without women’s input.”

The EFF leader reiterated that he would ‘never be proud of anything that doesn’t have women in it’, as ‘it’s a failure to all of you’.

Malema was speaking after the EFF in the Eastern Cape and Free State met over the weekend to elect new leadership.