- Former president Jacob Zuma and EFF leader Julius Malema's meeting over tea is set to take place at noon on Friday.
- The agenda for the meeting hasn't been disclosed.
- It is possible that their views on the Zondo commission will be on the agenda as both of them were being investigated by the commission and have misgivings about it.
Former president Jacob Zuma and EFF leader Julius Malema's meeting over tea is set to take place at noon on Friday.
The meeting was originally punted for the weekend, but the facilitator, Ekurhuleni Mayor Mzwandile Masina, confirmed this morning that he was booked on the next plane to Durban for the meeting, set to happen "between 12 and half past 12".
Masina refused to say what was on the agenda but said there might be a statement later.
"It will be important for us to share the details, but I don't want to be the one, when I'm not the main person there," he said.
"But it's something very constructive for us as a country, nothing sinister from either side," he said.
He added that the meeting was organised long before Zuma and Malema tweeted about it.
"It was not organised on Twitter, we just tweeted for awareness," he said.
Masina also revealed that a meeting between Zuma and President Cyril Ramaphosa was previously in the pipeline, but the Covid-19 lockdown made this difficult.
"That meeting is also on the table," he said.
"They're leaders of the country. They must have tea."
He hinted that the common theme of these meetings could be "the supremacy of the Constitution".
Zuma this week became the centre of controversy again when he said in a statement that he would disregard an order by the Constitutional Court to appear before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture because he had an issue with how it was constituted.
In a statement, the EFF said although Zuma's defiance of the Constitutional Court was "misguided", it felt that the commission was a "factional instrument" devised by Ramaphosa to protect "capitalist money".
Malema and his deputy, Floyd Shivambu, were reported to be under investigation by the Zondo commission themselves due to their alleged role in the looting of VBS Mutual Bank.
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Malema, who Zuma hailed as a possible future president of the country when Malema supported his rise to power in 2007, subsequently became one of the most vocal campaigners for Zuma's expulsion from the Presidency. The meeting seems to signal that the two could be finding common ground again.
Masina, who is in the lobby of the ANC sympathetic to Zuma, said his personal view on the matter was that it would be important to establish what the issues were, and to find a solution.
"I don't think president Zuma said he's not going to appear before the commission. He has a problem with the person. We must differentiate," Masina said, referring to Zuma's belief that Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo would be partial against him due to having a child from a previous relationship with the sister of one of Zuma's wives.
"So it will be important to find out what is the issue, and then what is the solution because at the end of it all, I don't think we should be coming across as a nation to be undermining our own value system which is embedded in our Constitution," he said.
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