Africa Day should be a public holiday and not “useless Reconciliation Day”, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema told hundreds of EFF supporters during their Africa Day celebrations at Jubilee Park in Sunnyside, Pretoria.

He said on Friday it was a day for Africans to celebrate themselves and that there should not be work and school on this day, which should be used to teach the young people about where they come from in order to chart the way forward.

“It is when we tell the whole world and those who care to listen that we are African and we are proud. We are not ashamed to be African,” he said.

“Why have useless holidays like Reconciliation Day? Reconciliation what? The actual Reconciliation Day is the day those invaders defeated the Zulus; it is not an honest day that should be celebrated by ourselves.

“We are even made to celebrate Christmas Day, yet it has nothing to do with us,” Malema said to loud applause.

The commander in chief also spoke directly to those South Africans who referred to African foreigners as “makwerekwere” to stop it.

“We hate one another today, we kill one another today, because we don’t know who we are.

“We call people Zimbabweans, we call people Malawians, we call people who come from outside makwerekwere (a slang for foreigners in South Africa). Where else we are makwerekwere ourselves because we come from where those people come from.

“None of us. We come from where those people come from,” Malema said.

He said the Khoi and San people were the original inhabitants in South Africa and that no one else was from South Africa.

“We came from the north and the Khoi and the San people were in Southern Africa. The Khoi and the San welcomed us here and we settled here,” Malema said.

He said EFF supporters should welcome people from other countries the same way the Khoi and the San welcomed them.

“This is our history,” Malema said.

Malema said fellow South Africans should not see people from Tanzania as their enemies, but rather celebrate African leaders such as Dr Kenneth Kaunda of the former Northern Rhodesia, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, who had welcomed the ANC and PAC in exile.