The ANCYL's 'cockroach' fumigator

Another ANC Youth League leader is in hot water over hate speech and incitement to violence.

The league chairperson in the Vaal's Sedibeng region, Jason Mkhwane, told Al Jazeera this week that leaders of the Congress of the People (Cope) are cockroaches which should be killed.

The Mail & Guardian spoke to the 30-year-old former student leader and former ANC ward councillor in the Emfuleni municipality, who holds a degree in logistics management from the Vaal University of Technology and now works in the municipality as a senior administration officer.

Any change of heart on the "cockroaches" statement?
I'm not feeling bad about that statement. All these people in Cope are behaving like cockroaches and should be destroyed.

Why "cockroaches"?
By distorting the history of the organisation, by behaving as if history started yesterday, they are behaving like cockroaches and cockroaches should be killed.

League leader Julius Malema got into trouble for using the word "kill" and your colleague Themba Ndaba used the same word in the Al Jazeera interview ...
We're not talking about killing human beings here, we're talking about cockroaches. When you see a cockroach in your house what do you do? You kill it.

So you're repeating what Malema said and what he's had to explain and justify for months.
I would not compare the two. He said it in a different scenario from ours. He said it in his own right and we are saying it in a different context. There is no relationship.

You still insist Cope leaders should be killed?
I want you to understand how we're going to kill them: we'll mobilise all our forces, all our masses and ensure that the ANC wins next year's election.

So you're not going to apologise for the statement?
No, we're not. We said we must apologise that people misinterpreted what we were saying.


You can't claim you were misquoted -- you said it on television!
These people at Al Jazeera were trying to pull the strings; they deliberately misinterpreted what we are saying. We still remain firm, in fact they should be destroyed. Our message is that people don't want cockroaches.

You've claimed your poor English as an excuse. But you have a tertiary qualification and you've been in leadership positions from school right up to local government.
I don't know how the media interprets these things. We never said we don't know English, but if I'm not able to reach your level of understanding, you'll have to pardon me. We all know English is a foreign language.

Labelling people "cockroaches" resulted in the Rwandan genocide. Why use the word knowing what happened in that country?
Maybe they used it in a different context. We're using it in the context of our lifetime. We're not in Rwanda, we're in South Africa.

We don't want to borrow it [the word cockroaches] from Rwanda or anywhere in the world.