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Cape Town - About 200 ANC members chanting “Dubula uMalema” (shoot Malema) arrived at Parliament today, saying they were there to defend the ANC from the EFF and its leader Julius Malema.
Dressed in ANC and alliance partners regalia, the crowd formed a long queue outside of the main entrance to Parliament waiting to be registered to enter the house where ministers in the peace and security cluster were responding to written questions, City Press reported.
They broke into struggle songs, warning Malema and the EFF not to try and disrupt the House in the way they did when President Jacob Zuma answered questions last week.
“We are here to defend democracy and this Parliament. We can’t, when we have struggled so much, allow hooligans and criminals like Malema and his EFF to undermine our party. We will never allow that,” said one of the angry protesters.
“We are coming to observe because this is the Parliament of the people. Everything is being disrupted; we are here to see what’s happening. Someone is disrupting the majority party. We are here to make sure that those people are not disrupted,” said another protester, Musa Makolo.
Security was tight inside the parliamentary precinct and those attending proceedings were subject to strict registration processes. The crowd was escorted by the VIP protection unit into the National Assembly chamber.
Inside the chamber, the ANC supporters took seats in the public gallery to listen to deliberations. Malema and his EFF MPs – dressed in jackets and suits instead of their trademark red overalls – took their seats on opposition benches. They did not seem bothered by the ANC crowd.
The EFF had warned earlier in the day that it had heard that the ANC would be busing in supporters from the townships on the Cape flats to Parliament.
An hour into the National Assembly sitting, however, some in the crowd were snoozing while others filed out quietly as the expected fireworks looked unlikely to happen.
