ActionSA lays complaint with Speaker of Parliament Over Encouragement of Illegal Immigration

18 January 2021

Today I have written to the Speaker of Parliament to lay a formal complaint against EFF leader Julius Malema for his public encouragement of illegal immigration last week.

Our legal team has compiled a complaint that details how Malema, in making his remarks, is in breach of his oath of office as an MP, and his advocacy for the breach of the MP Code of Conduct, Ethics and Members interests:

“So let the borders be open and if the gates are not going to be open for SADC, fellow SADC people please find a creative way this is your home, your families are here. There is no ways anyone is going to close you out here. Lesotho and Free State are one thing, Mpumalanga and Swazi land are one thing, North West and Botswana are one thing, Limpopo and Zimbabwe are one thing. What is the point, there is no point at all…”

The link to the remarks can be viewed here.

As a Member of Parliament, Malema is given the responsibility to make or amend laws, but no MP has the right to openly advocate for these same laws to be broken. When one considers that this public call for illegal immigration comes at a time of a global pandemic, where a second wave of infections has overwhelmed our hospitals, his remarks warrant the strongest actions of parliament.

Malema, like many MPs, needs to be taught that principles like the rule of law are not instruments to be used when politically convenient.

Malema enjoyed branding former President Jacob Zuma a constitutional delinquent, and yet now acts in a manner which warrants this title himself.

We are a country and countries have borders at which they exercise their sovereign right to determine who may and who may not enter. We need MPs, from all political parties, to fight for South Africans at a time when our government is failing to serve its citizens.

Issued by Michael Beaumont, ActionSA Chairperson, 18 January 2021