Malema mocks Ndlozi for not voting: ‘It’s not normal’

Ndlozi was not one of the nearly 16 million South Africans who turned out to cast their ballots this week. EFF leader Julius Malema has taken a dig at former MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi for not voting in this year’s local government elections. Ndlozi was not one of the nearly 16 million South Africans who turned out to cast their ballots this week, arguing that the black vote had been so fragmented that he did not see its value. “I am very unhappy with the conduct of black people in South Africa. I don’t understand why we have accepted being so itemised. We won’t achieve everything. The amount of division… You can’t act if you are divided,” he said in a TV interview this week, saying the political parties that competed were just there for themselves. The comments sparked fierce debate, and Malema was quick to give his thoughts. “You will never leave the EFF and sound normal. How do you not vote and think it is normal? Your over-exaggerated self-importance,” Malema said during a media briefing following the 2026 election results. He brought in Ndlozi’s work with the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, saying he could not imagine telling Mbeki that he would not vote. “How do you say to Thabo Mbeki; ‘I am thinking of not voting’? A man who almost died for you to vote. A man who lost his child for you to vote. A man whose father nearly died in prison for you to vote. A man whose mother led village women into liberation, and you come here to say all of those efforts are useless because you are thinking of not voting. And then you actually do it and not vote. “Not voting is abnormal, it is counter-revolutionary. You can’t associate with such people.” Malema said even Mbeki voted when he was angry with ANC president Jacob Zuma, and that petty differences should not stop a person from making their voice heard. “You go around claiming to be intelligent and don’t appreciate the importance of voting? I will vote for the EFF, even if I am the only one. “The message must be that we must go out and vote; it doesn’t matter who you vote for.”