Radical South African opposition leader Julius Malema lashed out at “bloody racists” on Twitter Thursday, after an Afrikaner rights group said it would be prosecuting him for corruption.
“Bring it on bloody racists, you don’t scare me at all. I’m born ready! No white man will decide my destiny, the poor masses of our people will,” Malema tweeted after the group, Afriforum, held a news conference announcing the move against him.
Gerry Nel, the prosecutor in the Oscar Pistorius murder case, will be heading Afriforum’s case, which relates to a lucrative tender awarded by a provincial department of transport to an engineering company Malema as involved in.
It is alleged the engineering company paid Malema kickbacks in return for the spitfire politician’s influence in their getting the tender in northern Limpopo province.
The scandal first came to light several years ago but no prosecution has yet taken place.
Malema has always denied any wrong doing.
Afriforum said it was bringing the abandoned case back because “someone like Malema, who claims to represent the poor people and then plunders the state coffers to enrich himself … must be exposed for who and what he really is.”
Malema was once the leader of the ruling African National Congress’s influential youth league, but became disillusioned with the pace of change in South Africa under the party.
He was expelled from the ANC and formed his own party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which supports the return of white-owned land without compensation to blacks.
He has become an influential player in local politics, known for his incendiary comments, and has a significant following.