Malema’s attack on Mandela legacy immature – Cope
Congress of the People’s leader Mosiuoa Lekota said Julius Malema’s attacks on former president Nelson Mandela’s legacy were immature and uninformed.
“The Congress of the People (Cope) rejects Julius Malema’s immature and uninformed claim that our late President Nelson Mandela sold out the struggle of the people and of South Africa; and that he deviated from the Freedom Charter,” Lekota said in a statement.
“Mandela reconciled black and white in our country and guided us away from what could so easily have turned into a massive bloodbath in our country. Mandela ensured that infrastructure, so essential to our economy, remained intact and undestroyed so that the platform existed for the economy to expand to accommodate the nation at large. That the present Government is failing dismally to take the country into the future is not Nelson Mandela’s fault by any stretch of the imagination.”
The Economic Freedom Fighters leader criticised the late former president, saying that he had turned his back on parts of the revolution after being released from prison.
Malema was addressing the Oxford Union in the United Kingdom on Wednesday and was responding to a question on whether Mandela betrayed the people of South Africa in exchange for political power.
“The deviation from the Freedom Charter was the beginning of the selling out of the revolution. But why did Nelson Mandela sell out the Freedom Charter? When Mandela returned from prison he got separated with Winnie Mandela and went to stay in a house of the rich white men… he was looked after by the Oppenheimers,” Malema was quoted as saying.
Lekota added that the nationalisation that Malema has been talking about was tried by socialist countries as well as many African countries with all of the failing.
“Mandela led democratically and the decisions that were taken in 1994 and subsequently came from a collective where debate flourished. Cope therefore roundly rejects Malema’s attack on Nelson Mandela. It is immature as well as uninformed,” he said.
