WATCH | ‘Childish, girlish!’ — Malema’s brutal verdict on ex-minister Nkabane

Nkabane

Cape Town – EFF leader Julius Malema has urged former deputy higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane to take accountability for her actions and work on her parliamentary conduct if she hopes to revive her political career.

Nkabane was dismissed from her position after being accused of misleading Parliament about the composition of an “independent panel” that allegedly selected politically connected individuals to chair the Sector Education and Training Authority (Seta) boards. The claim was later disproven, with some of the people she mentioned denying any involvement.

Speaking at a press briefing in Cape Town on Thursday, Malema criticised Nkabane’s behaviour both inside and outside Parliament. He expressed disappointment over her apparent lack of professionalism, including chewing gum during a portfolio committee meeting and failing to attend key parliamentary sessions where she was expected to account for the Seta appointments.

“It’s so painful,” Malema said.

“She’s so young. She still has a chance to come back. I’ve seen people get demoted politically, and then work on themselves and then they come back.

“The first thing she must do is stop chewing gum in a meeting. She was doing it yesterday there in Parliament.”

Malema emphasised the need for humility and a willingness to learn, saying Nkabane must be open to receiving proper guidance.

He said she still has a chance to recover if she humbles herself, accepts guidance, and returns to grassroots politics to rebuild.

“The second thing she must do is be humble and know she doesn’t know, and be prepared to be guided and advised by proper people. Only a person who doesn’t know how Parliament works would have advised her to do the things she did.”

One of the key controversies involved Nkabane falsely claiming that legal expert advocate Terry Motau was part of the Seta panel. She later apologised, calling it a misunderstanding. However, Malema was blunt in his response.

“You made a terrible mistake. You lied about people, including Motau. Motau comes and says, ‘Who, me? I’ve never done that’,” he said.

Despite being expected to appear before the higher education parliamentary committee to address the Seta board issue, Nkabane opted instead to attend a national student leadership induction programme at Buffalo City TVET College.

“She gets a second chance to go to a committee to present herself in a different way and acknowledge her mistakes, but she doesn’t,” Malema said. “She leaves the committee and goes to a gender-based violence programme at a TVET college — when TVET colleges are the responsibility of a deputy minister who couldn’t go to the TVET because there was a committee of Parliament.”

He went on to suggest that she was receiving poor advice: “Someone from the streets is misleading her. She’s listening to someone who has no idea what we’re dealing with.”

Malema concluded by saying there are certain protocols in Parliament that Nkabane failed to observe — including how she responded to her own party’s chairperson.

“There are certain things you don’t do in Parliament, and she should have known that. You don’t respond to the chairperson who’s from the same party in the manner she did. You should know, ‘if anything, my protection will come from here’. Google it. What’s that? That was childish. Extremely girlish. She was not ready to be a minister. It’s not too late. She must go back to the branch, learn, and come back.”

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