Juju attacks lawyers for ‘humiliation’

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema says the party’s humiliating legal losses to Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum this week are the result of “incompetent” lawyers.

He told eNCA’s Vuyo Mvoko in an interview: “The mistake we made as the EFF is to hire incompetent people who lack professionalism, who are not in a position to follow up matters before court in detail.”

Malema added that the party had now restructured its legal team.

“People call themselves lawyers, people call themselves black lawyers, and they want to be empowered in the name of black lawyers, even when they are offering me joke [sic],” he said.

Malema explained he was directing his anger at “lawyers of the EFF who are on a retainer, monthly, getting paid, but fail to do simple things [in terms of] following up the case, [and don’t know] which case is coming when and what should we do”.

“For instance, let’s take Ms Mbeki’s case,” he continued. “A lawyer says to us we are filing a motion to oppose and just filing a motion to oppose is enough. The matter will now be sent to the opposed role. But the new lawyers say it’s not enough. You ought to file a notice to oppose and then still file an affidavit,” he said.

Malema was referring to the EFF’s legal battle against journalist Thandeka Gqubule-Mbeki who, alongside Anton Harber, wants the party to retract a statement asking the pair to prove they were not Stratcom spies under apartheid. The journalists are also seeking an apology and damages of R1 million each.

SAfm reported this week that the red berets were given a week to prove the claim that Gqubule and Harber were, indeed, apartheid-era spies, as the statement implied, but the EFF says it was only quoting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Turning to the matters the party lost against AfriForum, Malema detailed the mistakes made by the EFF’s legal team before saying: “They [AfriForum] have not won [on] the merit. They’ve won on technicalities because of the EFF not being present. Now we’ve corrected that – bring it on, Baba.”

“We are not scared of these Boers. They were winning in our absence. We are now in it and let’s go toe to toe before the judge on merits of the case.”

Nelson Mandela said “sport has the power to inspire... it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does”.

Every day, South Africans are greeted with horror crime stories, wave after wave of fresh corruption claims involving high-profile names and a limping economy. In short, a nation struggling to make ends meet needs some good news ... some inspiration.

Hopefully for sport fans, their sports heroes will do the country proud across the world this weekend,

We are not scared of these Boers. Let’s go toe to toe before the judge.

Julius Malema EFF leader