A responsible citizen actively engages in civil society organs, knows local governance structures, and supports community development through ethical business practices that prioritize worker welfare and community well-being over profit maximization; true wealth comes from hard work and sustainable business practices rather than political connections, and businesses should invest in education and community development to create lasting positive change.
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Julius Malema at Collen Mashawana Foundation Gala Dinner (prior 2026)Added:
[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> He's not a person of suits. He's always relaxed. He's a professor.
Um let me greet all citizens who are here.
And let me send my special salutation to Dr. Mehanna who was an ANC chaplain on the day we got expelled from the ANC.
Dr. Mehanna was called to our office when the DC of the ANC announcement was delayed for too long.
And he came to pray for us.
But before he prayed for us, and he doesn't know this, he said to us, "Whatever happens today, it is not the end of the world.
You're going to leave here and you're going to fight out there."
And he has always been a good mentor and a father to me because since that time we've always kept contact.
Even when they tried to destroy him, I called back to him.
A lot of people say worse things in their private space.
And you need not to worry because you are a good man with a good heart.
You must soldier on and never feel discouraged as a man of God.
I did the same to Sello Hatang when he got expelled from Mandela Foundation.
And I didn't understand what was the accusation because one of the accusations was that he bought Nando's with the credit card of Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Now you can see how petty these people were.
And that someone was just going after him.
But you go after a man who is an epitome of what Bokolane are doing.
You cannot see Sello and not see an active citizen.
And that's why we always believe that he will always rise and continue to do what he was doing at Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Minister Zulu is a very good sister of mine.
We boxed a lot in Parliament and become very good friends at Collen Mashawana Foundation activities because we share a common friend.
And that's why we are always in the same space without feeling any irritation because we understand our game.
I came with the MMC of finance from Ekurhuleni and the speaker of the council of Ekurhuleni.
And I was so excited to see the VC of Unisa with us here today.
And I thought this was a special occasion because she's a special woman who always led from the front even when they wanted to undermine her leadership primarily as a woman and not just as a woman, but African woman.
She never got scared.
She literally fought them and pushed back hard.
And she became the real mother So, seated with us is good leadership for our people.
Let me salute the family of Mashawana and congratulate Dr. Collen Mashawana for having been honored by Unisa for his contribution and positive contribution in societal development.
I send my special greeting to your wife because I heard Mashabela making a silly joke that you are not married.
You are married with a wife.
Like I'm married with a wife.
And I doubt if my bow tie is sitting properly because since I got married, it was for the first time that the security had to help me put a bow tie because my wife is not here with me.
She's away with the kids on holiday.
I also want to send my greetings to Cecil who has always stood by him and gave him courage even when it was not fashionable to do so.
I want to say to Ma Mashawana, Collen's mom, it is always nice to see you because we can always feel your genuine love for us.
That when you see us, you are not pretentious.
You are a mother who hasn't seen their children for far too long because I'm here to say something about citizenship in a very brief way.
That a responsible citizen is a citizen that engage in organs of civil society.
If you want to be an active citizen, you must know organs of people's power.
That an active citizen will not live in an area where you don't know who is the chairperson of the hospital board.
Who doesn't know who is the SGB.
Who constitute our police forum.
Who are the people who are part of the street committees that are fighting crime.
Who are the patrollers.
And what did patrollers eat today before they went on a patrol to protect as a society.
So, it is important that as businessmen, you become good citizens.
You need to know the ecosystem around your existence.
You should know who does what, where, and how do we support them.
Because a good citizen who is a businessman and a business woman will always engage in ethical business that seeks to develop society to become a better society.
A good businessman who wants to become a good citizen will not maximize profit at the expense of the well-being of our people.
That a good businessman who is a good citizen will always ensure that you look after those who are around you including your neighbors.
It is not only for business people, it is also for all citizens who've got the means.
It should be that you help those who are not related with you by blood.
If you go around saying you are helping people, and we ask you who, you say my cousin, my aunt, and all of that's not help. That's an obligation.
A help is when you help someone you don't know.
And you put a smile on those beautiful African faces like the Collen Mashawana does to people who are not known to him.
You cannot be a good businessman who doesn't look after the well-being of your workers.
That workers must be paid, paid on time, and be paid living wages.
Because once you take care of one worker, the likelihood is that you are looking after 15 to 20 people in one family.
Do not just treat this one face you see.
You must see the many faces behind this one face.
As a child of a domestic worker, I used to stand at the bus stop and wait for her when she returns from work.
And every day she came out of her bus with a plastic.
I knew she came back with leftovers.
We're going to eat.
That white person didn't know that by giving her leftovers, she was feeding more people behind that face.
So, you look at a worker, you must know that I'm carrying on my shoulders as a businessman the well-being of many other people.
For because without you, a lot of people will go hungry.
You will rather not make profit that month.
You will rather not buy luxury vehicles for that month.
You'll rather not spend money in the clubs.
Always make sure that your workers get a salary at the end of the day.
And when that day comes, a responsible businessman is always frustrated because they know that if I miss this hour in a day, a lot more people are going to be affected.
So, we can pledge Mr. Dr. Mashawana.
Because we're looking for pledges ourselves.
We're going to elections, so we can't be we can't pledge what we don't have.
So, I'm very happy that as they were pledging, some of them came to pledge to me that we're together we'll sort you out when we leave. He was like, this was not a waste of time.
At least EFF is also benefiting at the back of Collen Mashawana Foundation.
So, we want to say to you uh Dr. Mashawana that do not get discouraged.
Not everybody will be happy for you.
Not everybody will support you.
Do not seek validation from your haters.
You must always be a trendsetter.
And do not compete with anyone.
Because if you compete, you run a risk of losing.
Because you're going to compete with drug lords.
You're going to compete with human traffickers.
As you look at a human being buying a bracelet of 150,000, and you think you can beat that, you don't know where that money comes from. You only know about your money.
I always tell my son that I'm the richest man in the world.
And he says, "Dad, what do you mean?" I say, "I only know my bank balance.
I don't know any other person's bank balance. I hear about them people saying this one is rich. I don't care. Mine, I'm fine.
I don't want to know any other person person's bank balance. After knowing it, what must I do with it?
I don't care who's got which car.
After knowing, what must happen?
I must buy that which my heart desire.
Not because I compete with someone else.
Because competition is what is going to land us into trouble.
Set your own pace, move at your own pace, do not compete, be a trendsetter.
When you do that, you have no prayer.
But let me tell you, if there is a wealth you are enjoying today, and it was accumulated within a short space of time, you must know you will never enjoy it.
A proper wealth is a one that you must sweat and work for it.
So much that when you lose power and you retreat to your farm, no one follows you at your farm.
Because that time you are old, you have no power, you can't bribe this one, you can't do anything. That's the time when they come for you.
When it is time to enjoy that wealth.
So, the businesses you have been speaking about today, they don't want people who are impatient with themselves.
Because business is not popcorns.
It's something that you build in your mind, you conceptualize it, and you realize it, and see it grow.
It is only when you can stay in Johannesburg, and you have business in Polokwane, and you don't have to be in Polokwane for a business to run, then you must know I've got business.
But if you can't leave your business because when you leave, it is likely to collapse, it's not business, it's self-employment.
So, you ought to make sure that you build businesses that are sustainable and self-sufficient.
Tenders is not business.
You must never say I'm in business. What are you doing? I'm tendering.
You must go and tender and take the money of the tenders and invest in business.
Every invoice must be paying into some investment that is sustainable and is going to take care of you when the tenders are gone.
Because tenders depend on political connection.
And political power is not permanent.
Doesn't matter how good President Mbeki was, it came to an end.
Doesn't matter how President Zuma did for us all, it came to an end.
Your mayor, your MEC, your minister who gives you tenders, one day will be out of power.
And what will happen to you?
So, you have to use tenders as a way of intervening into building sustainable companies. You get millions and millions of money.
You can't even show us an apartment that you bought not as a home, but as an investment.
Once you don't make money out of it, it is a liability.
You have to put money where money is going to come from.
I do not worship tender dudes.
Many of them can't even read and write.
They hire people to fill tender documents for them.
They don't even know the cost of what they are tendering for.
But those who conceptualize business, those are the people that I respect and I always celebrate.
And I know that seated here are men and women who use the government intervention in their lives to now put money in a sustainable program.
Let's go and get every child every child to school.
When we say education must be free, Minister Lindiwe Zulu, it's because if you guys had given us free education in 1994, we're not going to need RDP houses.
We're going to build our own houses because we are educated.
We need free why uh free education?
Because Verwoerd said, "Why do you keep give an African child mathematics?
What is an African child going to do with mathematics?"
So, 1994 should have meant everything else that we were denied must be given to our people.
They said you can't be taught mathematics because mathematics comes with high positions.
And high positions were reserved for white people. That's why they said, "What are they going to do with mathematics?"
We need to go back and invest in education and liberate the mind of an African child. Decolonized education that teach Africans to be proud of themselves, and not Africans who worship borders, and say they hate colonialism and apartheid, but love borders which were brought to us by colonizers.
And argue about borders as if there is a country in the world that succeeded economically because it had a fence.
That fence is equal to success.
In your home, you've got a fence, and you're poor.
Why is the fence not helping you at home if fence means success?
Why are we obsessed with hating each other as Africans instead of working together? There are so many opportunities all over Africa which you deny yourself because of the fence.
And you know the fence in Southern Africa is some madness.
Because really there's no fence.
But there is a gate.
Have you ever seen a person with a yard putting a gate but there's no fence? And every time when he enters that yard, he opens the gate and even lock it.
That's us.
There's no fence in Lesotho.
No fence in Zimbabwe.
But we keep on wanting to believe on non-existing things.
Hate me for what you want.
I will never preach the division of African people. If it's going to cost me votes, let it be because I will never be voted for by xenophobic individuals.
Someone stood up in a meeting I was speaking and he said, "They took our jobs."
I said, "After the meeting, come to me.
Let's go fetch the job that they took from you."
The person has never worked in the entire life in his entire life, but they took his job. You don't have jobs because the economy is not growing, not because Zimbabweans are here.
Once they tell you the economy is not growing, then you must know there will never be jobs.
The growing economy show itself through the creation of jobs.
Don't listen to the story of Zimbabweans and Lesotho. 20. Just look at the economic indicators as to whether our economy is growing or not.
And if they say we are not growing, then you should know we're going to be in a crisis of jobs.
You know, I have got a big problem and I don't understand why you guys don't have that big problem.
When we grew up, I grew up in Seshego in a township.
There used to be by courts where people said, "We don't want matchbox houses.
We want better houses."
In Soweto and everywhere else in Umlazi, we want better houses.
Why did Where did we get the concept of better houses?
We looked at the houses that Africaner government was giving to the poor Africaners.
And we said, "If we are poor, we must get something like this or even better than this."
Show me in the Oxford dictionary VC of Unisa where they say a house is a house without a flushing toilet.
It's a house with a toilet.
If it doesn't have a flushing toilet, it's a glorified mkhukhu.
Because only mkhukhu can be built without a toilet. I've never walked into any mkhukhu where they say there is an en suite.
They turned this corrugated iron into some cement and bricks, but this is still the same thing.
And we are made to celebrate that which we said we'll never accept from apartheid.
And not only that, the apartheid houses are still standing today.
And these ones that they call the RDP houses of 30 years ago have collapsed.
If your like yours is not collapsed, it has also got a huge crack inside.
I'm not saying apartheid houses were better.
But I came here with Collins Foro.
And if a stranger was to clap me here now, I mean, me and Collins Foro were going to team together and fight this stranger which clapped me.
But if I were to be clapped by Collins Foro, it's going to be more painful than that which was done to me by the stranger, but the act is the same.
But because it's done by a person you came with, the person who knows your pain, the person who knows your suffering, why can't they do better?
Because they know our conditions. They don't have to read about it.
And that's why Collins' houses are a cause for celebration because he doesn't build these houses of theirs.
And when you pledge here, you must never think you are going to do those RDP houses in the name of Collins Mashawana Foundation.
A house must have corner corners zig-zag so and so.
Even a passage.
Even a dining, even a lounge, even a kitchen, even a flushing toilet, not toilet outside. When you go to a toilet, it's like you are taking a tourism act. You are touring to the toilet.
But how do you say we are human beings and you want to make us human beings and you give us houses in the bushes without toilets and FLUSHING TOILETS?
THAT WHICH differentiate us as animals between ordinary animals and human beings is because we have flushing toilets.
Only other animals must drop it and still see it.
We don't have to see it.
Anyone who gives us those types of toilets is perpetuating our indignity.
There's no dignity where there is no flushing toilet.
So, Mashawana, we are happy that you are building houses that restore the dignity of our people.
Banababa ba le be di kgodu kla bo mola eh bo foro mo le bo S'nao Thambo.
When their friends accompany them home tomorrow, they must not say drop me at the corner because they are ashamed of their house.
You must build them such a beautiful house that even when their friends want to drop them at home, they say drop me at the gate because that house has restored their dignity. Because the purpose of giving people houses is to restore their dignity.
Where is dignity without a flushing toilet?
Why does your school in the Eastern Cape where you went, successful businessman, who comes and stand here in front of us and pledge, your school has got pit toilets?
What have you done about it?
We need to declare a toilet revolution that every household must have a flushing toilet to restore the dignity of our people.
So, please, my brother, continue to build as many as you can.
Do not overstretch yourself and even take where it is not available because you put yourself under too much pressure.
Do it because there is availability and you can help.
You can't help with that which you don't have.
And those that came to speak and said they're in partnership with you and all of that, this is a businessman worth supporting because where you know when you give him business, it's not for him and his family and his mother and his wife only.
It's for them, too.
Cuz you are not going to build us houses if your mother stays in a shack.
You're not going to give us food parcels if your mother is sleeping with an empty stomach.
You're going to take care of her and your wife and your children, then take care of us.
Because it's important to establish that family unit in order to build a responsible a society.
So, please, continue to build those houses. I always stay away when you go to open those houses and all of that because I don't want to give you a political identity where your work is messed up with politics.
I want you to shine there and allow this foundation to flourish and become much more bigger.
We are there.
We are supporting and we'll always be there and support.
And we have done this even when it was difficult.
When we had nothing, we shared a plate and we have no reason to turn against each other now.
If you can sell your brother, the buyer has got no reason to trust you because you are unreasonable. So, always stand true to your brother and always have their back.
In the EFF, I always tell them that we call each other makabani.
But with my little knowledge of Xhosa, makabani means that those guys who were in the initiation, they used to put a powder they they still do. They put a powder on the body both in front and at the back.
And those people who are running the initiation tell you that this powder must be in front and the back.
So, a kabani of yours must come and cover you at the back and cover you so well, so much that there is no mirror for you to see yourself at the back.
But you must trust this guy That when I walk out here, my little one would have covered me in such a way that I will not get into trouble.
I don't see my bag and I don't have to see my bag because my brother is at the bag. He has taken care of what needs to be done at the bag.
Seated next to you, ask them if you can call them my caban.
Will you look after my bag?
Or the day I turn my back to attend to other issues, that's an opportune moment to plot my downfall.
Yet come and smile with me.
So, please, let's go and invest mercifully in education. I see houses. I see all of that.
I want us to spend money on education. I want us to identify, all of us here, children who have nothing to do with us.
And say, "This one, I'm going to take to school until she graduate and hire her in my firm because I'm a business person."
You give them education.
You give them permanent solution to poverty and inequality. Without education, all of this is artificial intervention.
My last point, please, we ought to support the people of Palestine.
You cannot support charity and care about humanity and not care about what these guys are doing in Palestine.
They are wiping off a nation right in front of our eyes.
They are one They want to destroy Palestine.
But Palestine has no program to destroy Israel.
Palestine's program is a self-determination.
They are fighting for their land. They are fighting for their dignity. They are fighting for humanity.
So, we should pledge our support to Palestine and call for peace in the Middle East because now Iran is going to get in.
It's becoming messy.
And a messy world is not good for business.
All of business that cares about humanity, we must stand up and say, "Stop the war in Palestine. Stop wiping off the Palestinians from their own land."
We come from there.
We got support internationally.
There were matches all over to support the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid.
We are direct beneficiaries of international solidarity. And therefore, we cannot behave like we don't know that international solidarity can help the people of Palestine because it helped us.
So, we make a plea that, "Please, support Palestine and call for peace in the Middle East."
Mama Shawani, continue to support your children. Some of us we long for these days where our mothers and our fathers and our grandparents walk next to us.
They still need you.
They still need you to call order and ask them to come down and think rationally before they make certain decisions.
So, you are sitting here today. You might not give a speech, but that is a speech enough for you to be here because even when we finish speaking and we are going to be visiting Holy Water, we'll be looking at where you are, whether you are seeing us or not, and behaving perfectly. Will it be Once we start wanting to be ourselves, we'll be like, "Colin, is she not going home?"
Because we know that in your presence, we've got no luxury of misbehaving.
Because arinye akho olakabile.
We want you to sleep with a beautiful smile.
We don't want to bring a blanket on top of your coffin. Yet when you are still alive, we never bought you a blanket. We shall buy you many blankets annually so that when you die, we don't feel like we did bad to the old woman who looked after us.
Colin's mother is the EFF counselor there where she comes from.
Active member and counselor of the EFF.
So, that's why Colin is confused because there is Lindiwe Zulu here, there is Julius and my mother here. Okay, let them bring them all of them together.
They will see how they resolve their problems. So, here we've got a mother not only for Colin, but for the EFF as well.
Because EFF is not for the youth.
EFF is for the people of South Africa irrespective of their age, color, and where they come from. Including white people are welcomed in the EFF except racist.
Because we must never glorify whiteness.
This is black excellence, what I saw here today. It is not an easy time for us, Colin.
When you said I must come to our house on Wednesday and I must still come here on Saturday, right in the middle of an election campaign.
Rialwa.
But Robert Marimba, they are very difficult.
But at this elephant, we shall eat it piece by piece until we collapse it because we don't want a rushed victory.
We are going to build it gradually. The EFF turns 11 years this year.
The most formidable political formation in South Africa that owns a building at the city center of Johannesburg in less than 10 years.
They've been for centuries. They don't own their own offices.
Because we are a serious organization.
So, we are pleading with all of you including Minister Zulu, please vote for EFF. Thank you.
>> [laughter]
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