Zuma warns fiery ANC youth leader
AFP
JOHANNESBURG- South African President Jacob Zuma said Saturday that he would take measures against the ruling party's youth wing after its fiery leader insulted a BBC journalist and kicked him out of a press conference.
"The ANC Youth League is not an independent body. It exists within the umbrella policy and discipline of the ANC. The organisation will deal with these matters internally as it deems fit," Zuma said in a statement.
South African President Jacob Zuma, pictured in March 2010. (AFP/File/Carl Court)
"The manner in which a BBC journalist was treated at an ANC Youth League press conference is regrettable and unacceptable," he added.
"Certainly there must be consequences for such behaviour."
On Friday the ANC itself said it "strongly condemns" Malema's behaviour towards television journalist Jonah Fisher.
"The aggressive and insultive behaviour to the said journalist that culminated with Mr Fisher walking out of the youth league press briefing cannot be condoned at all," the party said.
Malema, 29, a polemical figure who has said he would kill for Zuma, called Fisher a "bastard" and a "bloody agent" after the journalist interrupted him at a briefing on his recent trip to Zimbabwe.
The scene ensued after Malema criticised Zimbabwe's former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for having an office in Sandton, a posh Johannesburg suburb.
Fisher interrupted Malema to point out that the youth leader himself lives in Sandton.
"Go out! Bastard! Go out! You bloody agent!" Malema shouted, after asking for security to be called to evict the journalist.
Malema is also at the centre of a storm over a song, "Shoot the boer" ("farmer" in Afrikaans), which opposition parties say incites violence against whites.
Right-wingers have linked the song to the killing this month of white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche, which reignited race tensions 16 years after the end of apartheid.
The song has been banned as hate speech in two court rulings, and Zuma said Saturday these decisions should be accepted.
"We commit ourselves to continue working tirelessly to build a non-racial, non-sexist, united and democratic South Africa," he said.
Zuma also implicitly criticised Malema for attacking Zimbabwe's MDC, saying as mediators in the country's politics South Africa should not take sides.
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