ALMOST a year after he first called on Julius Malema to come home to the ANC, David Mabuza has repeated that he would like the EFF founder and leader to return. The ANC deputy president’s appeal on Sunday, made while on a drive in Mamelodi to whip up enthusiasm among voters to register for the 2019 general election, echoed the sentiments of party stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a political leader who Malema reveres.

Mabuza said: “I am going to do my best to request he (Julius Malema) reconsiders coming back home.” Malema, the then ANC Youth League president, was kicked out of the ANC in 2012 after he was found guilty of provoking divisions within the party and of also bringing the organisation into disrepute. Derek Hanekom, who headed the ANC’s national disciplinary committee at the time, described as “reckless”, Malema’s statements on Botswana.

This was after Malema had said the Youth League would send a team to neighbouring Botswana to consolidate local opposition parties and help bring about regime change there. Although Malema later apologised for the remarks they were understood to have caused serious diplomatic embarrassment for the ANC. Malema was also found guilty of interrupting a meeting of the ANC’s national officials that included then party president Jacob Zuma.

The ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeals, headed by then party deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, dismissed Malema’s appeal against his expulsion. Afterwards, Malema and Floyd Shivambu launched the EFF in a departure that Mabuza said was a great loss. “The ANC has lost in comrade Julius. The ANC will be better off with him inside,” he said.

On Saturday, Madikizela-Mandela, who was also on a campaign to persuade voters to register in the Independent Electoral Commission’s first voter registration weekend of the year, also said she intended to persuade Malema to come back to the ANC. “Please go and register to vote so that we can take out the DA and we can take out all the other parties and I know one day I will bring back my boy Julius Malema.

“I will bring him home to the ANC,” she said, while accompanying ANC president Ramaphosa. Malema has repeatedly said he would never return to the ANC. Last month at a press briefing in Parliament after Jacob Zuma had resigned as president he reiterated his stance. He said: “I will never go back to the ANC,” stressing that he would sooner become a political analyst or leave politics than return to the ANC.

He said: “Why would you want me to go to the ANC now that Zuma has gone?” At that press conference Malema also blamed Ramaphosa, Hanekom, former ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and former finance minister Pravin Gordhan for his expulsion. Hanekom, Mantashe and Gordhan are key Ramaphosa allies and have been rewarded for helping him capture the ANC presidency in December by a recall to the Cabinet for Hanekom and Gordhan and a first executive position for Mantashe, who has not been a member of Parliament before.

Their presence and Ramaphosa’s leadership makes a Malema homecoming unlikely. Last year the EFF was scathing about Mabuza’s wish for a Malema return. It issued a statement that put the matter in perspective from its view – “The commander in chief, Julius Malema, will never be recruited into any political work, or formation by a kleptocrat like Mabuza. “DD Mabuza represents everything that is wrong about the ruling party, he is like Zuma’s first-born kleptomaniac,” the EFF said.