In a tweet, Malema said, “Someone said to me ‘if you want us to vote for you in 2024 you must abandon this thing of foreigners’. I’m prepared to go home. I’m fine. I will never take a platform and denounce Africans. I will never do it. If it means votes are doing, let them go. I’m prepared to go home. But to take a platform and please white minority by pointing a finger at other fellow black brothers, I’m not going to do that. When I see a Nigerian or a Zimbabwean or a Congolese or Ghanaian, I see myself.
“The EFF can do internal research to see how much this thing is hurting the EFF, but I am not prepared to take a platform to say ‘foreigners must go home’. I would rather not be a president of South Africa. I will be a president of my children at home. We will practice Cabinet issues there. I don’ want. You mean I should go and tell these hungry Zimbabweans to leave and when I tell them to leave, I send them where.”
The presence of foreign nationals in the country continues to be a heated debate as parties race to form coalitions for 66 hung municipalities.
Two key king markers – Action SA and the Patriotic Alliance – have made it clear that no illegal foreigners will be allowed to live in their municipalities.
VOA correspondent Thuso Khumalo contributed to this article