(Bloomberg) — South African parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete was unrepentant Tuesday for labeling opposition party leader Julius Malema a cockroach, a politically loaded word that fueled ethnic hatred during a genocide in Rwanda.
Mbete, who is also ANC chairwoman, told reporters in Cape Town that her comments didn’t conflict with her role as head of the legislature. When asked whether her statement was appropriate and whether she should apologize, Mbete said lawmakers “are political beings” and that “we act out there as political animals.”
Mbete told members of the ruling African National Congress in the North West province to work together or risk having “cockroaches like Malema roaming about all over the place,” the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times newspaper reported on Feb. 15.
Her comments followed Malema’s disruption of President Jacob Zuma’s state-of-the-nation speech on Feb. 12, when lawmakers from his Economic Freedom Fighters demanded that the president repay state funds spent on his private home. Malema, 33, and EFF lawmakers were forcibly evicted from the legislature by armed security officers.
The word “cockroach” was used to incite ethnic Hutu militants in Rwanda to murder Tutsis during a genocide in 1994.
The EFF said on Feb. 15 that Mbete’s comments were an incitement to violence and she should resign, while human rights groups called on her to apologize.
‘Wrong Impression’
Her remarks cannot “be justified as having been made in her capacity as ANC chairperson,” the University of Pretoria’s Center for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.
Mbete defended her decision ordering the removal of the EFF members from Parliament during Zuma’s speech, while denying authorizing the scrambling of mobile phone signals, which prevented the media from initially transmitting information.
“We have a role to play to protect our democracy and we are determined to play that role according to the rules,” Mbete said. The EFF sought to embarrass the country and “create the wrong impression that there is constitutional crisis and chaos in our country. Our democracy was tested but our institution stood its ground.”
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