In the wake of the recent walk-out in parliament of EFF MPs and the police-enforced removal of the party’s members in the Gauteng Legislature on Tuesday, Economic Freedom Fighters Commander-In-Chief Julius Malema launched a scathing attack on the ruling party on Thursday, saying that they are slowly turning the country into a dictatorship. “I’m warning you. It’s coming to you. The ANC is slowly turning this country into a dictatorship. When it happens I’ll be there to say ‘I told you’, ” said Malema at a press conference in Johannesburg.

The comments come after Gauteng Legislature speaker Ntombi Mekgwe asked members of the EFF to leave the provincial legislature for wearing “inappropriate clothing”. Mekgwe ruled that the EFF’s red overalls – with the words “Asijki” (we will not turn back) printed on them – were inappropriate because they had party slogans on them. The police were called in to remove the members and the EFF is now claiming their members were assaulted. EFF’s president Malema said the incident amounted to intimidation and warned that if the ANC “pushed them any further” they were willing to hit back.

“The ANC musn’t push us because we are willing to fight,” started Malema. “There are no roses in fights. We can mobilise our people and fight physically. We won’t sit back and let this happen. The ANC knows that they won Gauteng through shenanigans. If we didn’t intervene in Alex, this province would have been in ashes. The ANC must not disrupt this country in our name,” said Malema.

Malema, popularly referred to as “Juju”, further stated that the party’s red overalls would continue to feature both in parliament and legislature as a symbol of the working class. “The ANC rejects clothes of workers and beats people up for wearing them. Don’t take that for granted. We’ll never allow the undermining of the working class by the ruling elite,” he concluded.

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