Jossey Buthane, a former EFF Limpopo leader and friend of Julius Malema, has opened up about how his life took a downward turn when he was axed from the party after the 2021 local government elections.
Things got so bad he tried to kill himself, he said, but this was not directly a result of being out in the cold politically.
“Look, the [attempted] taking of life was beyond politics. It has serious personal connotations to it, so it’s not politics, politics is something else. I would not have done that for politics. It was pressure that I could not handle at the time,” he said.
Buthane resurfaced last month in the ranks of the ANC, and he said the party had rescued him from despair.
He said he felt betrayed by people, especially Malema, whom he had considered to be a brother but who failed to help him in his time of need.
Actually, it was the EFF people who insulted me when I was in ICU [after attempting suicide]
— Former EFF Limpopo leader Jossey Buthane
“I think I have a crocodile skin. When I first saw the leadership of the EFF they were not only leaders, some of them were my brothers. And that’s how I operate. I’m a Christian so I don’t see people as objects. Now when people start to treat you like an object it hurts. But the hurting we had to absorb,” he said.
Buthane was hospitalised after his suicide attempt this year and spent months in the intensive care unit of a Limpopo hospital.
After his axing from the EFF, Buthane, once considered to be one of Malema’s closest allies, turned for help to ANC leaders — John Mpe, who is chair of the Peter Mokaba branch, and Limpopo health MEC Phophi Ramathuba.
“Actually, it was the EFF people who insulted me when I was in ICU. That guy called Julius [Malema], takes up a microphone in a list conference and talks nonsense that he can fight me to my grave. I was in ICU at the time so I wonder what kind of a leader does that. How do you love people you don’t know and you don’t see and hate people that you once shared a cup of tea with?” said Buthane.
This was the final straw for Buthane, who decided that it was time to return to his home, the ANC. But he did not return empty-handed — he brought along hundreds of EFF defectors.
So much so that the ANC was immediately able to claw back the critical ward 10 in Polokwane that had been under the EFF since 2016. Seshego, from where Malema hails, falls in this ward.
Now Buthane has but one mission: eliminate the EFF and other opposition parties in the province. He wants the ANC to be the only party representing the people of Limpopo.
He is on the warpath and is out to hurt his former party.
“It has become our programme that at the end of it all in Limpopo there must not be something called an opposition because it will derail progress,” said Buthane.
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