Malema said those are mourning the death of the queen are no different from Helen Zille.
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema has criticised black people who are mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II, saying they were celebrating colonialism.
The queen died on Thursday afternoon following a long battle with ill-health, Buckingham Palace confirmed in a statement.
Addressing a crowd following a march by different political parties to the Public Protector’s office on Friday, Malema said those are mourning the death of the queen are no different from Helen Zille.
“Heh we mourn the queen, we mourn the queen, but when Helen Zille tweeted and said colonialism was not all bad, you all said she is racist, ‘how can she praise colonialism?’ By mourning and praising the queen, you are celebrating colonialism, you are not different from Helen Zille,” said Malema.
“We were not colonised by the land called Britain, but the leadership of Britain that killed our people. We must not be asked to do wrong things here, we are very clear; the queen does not represent anything good. Britain has got a lot of gold yet they don’t have a single mine of gold. Those are stolen goods. We must talk about reparations, we must talk about the return of the gold and stolen diamonds and not these issues which are not important to us.
“How can you be oppressed for so many years and still have nothing to show that you’ve been liberated. You have no land, bank or mine. The only thing you have is hatred of other Africans. It was this Britain that gave us surnames, we didn’t have surnames, we used to call each other with our clan names. The surnames and addresses? We did not have an address because we used to move from one place to another according to the season. So today we are given addresses, borders and surnames because we must be controlled by a certain nation which we must celebrate
