Looking his militant best, all clad in ANC Youth League colours, topped off with a militant beret, Julius Malema found himself on CNN with Christiane Amanpour yesterday.

In a rather bizarre interview on CNN yesterday, Malema seemed to attempt to announce himself as some kind of enigmatic new leader, and still claim to be leader of the ANC Youth League at the same time, but instead he pissed off the Defence Ministry.

Malema told Amanpour that he had “taken up the leadership” of the struggle for economic freedom, and that South African mineworkers should strike for five days a week each month until their demands of pay increases are met.

You may have picked up that the top story in the Morning Spice was quite a big one: that South African military bases were placed on high alert last night for the first time since 1994.

Siphiwe Dlamini, Defence Ministry spokesman, said it was the first time that measures such as this had been necessary in the military:

The situation is being monitored. We cannot elaborate. Directives have been issued to base commanders and certain steps are being taken. The military is a non-partisan organisation … this is being viewed as incitement … which is a criminal offence … it will be treated as such.

Malema is supposed to address military members in Lenasia today, but he may in fact want to keep his eyes open for the odd rubber bullet honed on his upper thighs or bum if he does anything silly, like singing “Kiss The Boer”, as he calls it.

Amanpour questions Malema on the issue of the interpretation of the song that’s famous for inciting violence, that he sang yesterday while addressing mineworkers, and he simply tells her:

Those that are interpreting [for] you are misleading [you] and you must fire them.

Update: Malema remained defiant this morning and just tweeted that nothing will stop him meeting the armed forces today:

Keep an eye on his Twitter feed below, it’s getting a lot more interesting since he started operating it himself, and feel free to interact with him if you’d like:

Tweets by @Julius_S_Malema 

I’d imagine rubber bullets are sore Julius, watch out for them.

[Source: CNN]