When Julius Malema emerged from the halls of Parliament, following the completion of President Ramaphosa’s SONA speech, he looked rather unflustered.

In fact, as you can see from that picture above, he was beaming ear to ear.

At the time, the waiting media didn’t know what had gone on inside Parliament, with EFF MP Marshall Dlamini slapping a police officer, the klap heard around the country.

Once that footage spread, the EFF thugs were on the back foot, and they were scrambling for some way to justify their actions, with the officer laying charges against Dlamini.

Enter an early contender for 2019 Excuse of the Year, which involved the EFF saying that they had caught wind of a right-wing “planned assassination” on Malema, leading to the attack on the parliament security officer in “necessary self-defence”.

The EFF said that members of the police were involved in the plot, accusing them of being hired to assassinate Malema, ostensibly because of his stance on land expropriation without compensation.

I’ll have some of what they’re smoking.

For real, though – if you missed this one, have a look:

EFF Statement on the Assassination Threat on the CIC @Julius_S_Malema during the #SONA2019 pic.twitter.com/DZ3SniPZo1

— Economic Freedom Fighters (@EFFSouthAfrica) February 8, 2019

Perhaps Slapper-in-Chief Marshall never received that memo, because he trotted out the usual EFF line to justify his actions:

Which one was it, guys?

As an aside, Malema himself is now accused of assaulting a female police officer in the fracas, with the police incident report stating that Malema roughly pushed a female sergeant by her neck.

Police have confirmed that two cases of assault have been opened, although it’s not known whether the second was laid by the female police sergeant.

All of this leads us to Zapiro, and his latest cartoon, which appears on the Daily Maverick:

Even without the prerequisite Kubrick knowledge, you can make sense of this one.

If you want to read a really biting criticism of the EFF in the age of Ramaphosa, Richard Poplak’s your man.

[source:dailymav]