Julius Malema sets conditions for EFF joining GNU, says DA and FF Plus must leave first

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema has said the party would be willing to join the Government of National Unity (GNU) if the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Freedom Front Plus (FF+) withdrew, but would not compromise its political principles to enter government.

“We are not opposed to participating in GNU. If Helen (Zille) walks tomorrow, and that other one of Correctional Services, the Freedom Front, (Pieter) Groenewald, walk, we’ll go inside,” Malema said during a door-to-door election campaign in Naledi, Soweto. “We don’t play with power. We get it. We use it to benefit the black masses of our people.”

“We are not opposed to participating in GNU. If Helen (Zille) walks tomorrow, and that other one of Correctional Services, the Freedom Front, (Pieter) Groenewald, walk, we’ll go inside. We don’t play with power. We get it. We use it to benefit the black masses of our people.”

Malema said the EFF would not support a GNU that included parties he associated with the killing of liberation struggle figures Chris Hani and Solomon Mahlangu. “We don’t want a GNU that has got murders in it,” he said, asking how the EFF could share government with parties he accused of being linked to the deaths of struggle activists and children under apartheid.

“How do we explain that to Solomon Mahlangu, who had to be hanged even when the international community was saying ‘Do not hang children’? You are asking us to sit in cabinet with people who killed children.”

Malema said the EFF was focused on winning the elections rather than speculating about possible coalition arrangements in metropolitan municipalities. “Well, we go to elections to win. I’m not in that space to think what happens after. I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I know is that we’re going to win,” he said. He said the EFF would prioritise service delivery if it won, and consider negotiations with other parties if it failed to secure victory. “And after we win, we’re going to deliver services to our people.”