President Cyril Ramaphosa has revealed that he has repeatedly been warned that the Economic Freedom Fighters are “an MI6 project”.

Ramaphosa made the revelation during his response to this week’s Sona debate, in which Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota accused him of selling out his comrades during the apartheid struggle.

Ramaphosa said he has been advised not to address the “personal attacks and vitriol” levelled against him this week but decided to do so anyway.

“Let us be aware of wedge-drivers. I can testify I have never been a spy. I have never worked for the enemy,” Ramaphosa said.

The statement followed a detailed account in which he recalled how he was repeatedly arrested and put under pressure to give evidence against a number of comrades, including Lekota.

He said that in the end it was his neighbour who gave in and testified against Lekota, leading to his detention.

“There are three things they want from you. It is either you cooperate with them – you give evidence against your comrades. Or you become an askari and you kill your comrades. Or you become a paid agent. I did not do any of the three things that they wanted, not at all.”

The EFF’s Julius Malema had immediately called for a judicial commission into Lekota’s claims yesterday. The president warned Malema today about jumping on the bandwagon, saying that such accusations had previously resulted in death for many.

It was at this point that Ramaphosa also told the National Assembly that he had been warned before he was president, and in recent months since his election, that the EFF were a project of the British foreign intelligence service MI6.

“Honourable Malema you visited London a few years ago and said that Nelson Mandela was a sellout and then there were reports, and those reports kept coming, and I was not even intending to raise it here but I do so because we do need to deal with this issue because it is cancerous,” Ramaphosa said.

“A report that came out was that the EFF is an MI6 project. Now I rejected that. I rejected that because I knew we were dealing with people of good character; that you would never go to that extent. And they keep coming.

"With the position that one holds now, you keep getting all these innuendos, these accusations and these suggestions but in the end you end to deal with the character of a person. Now I have rejected those types of statements Honourable Malema because I look at you, your character and your commitment to the people of South Africa.”

Malema smiled from his seat in response but made no move to make any objections, allowing Ramaphosa to continue speaking.

Having addressed the claims that shocked the house yesterday, Ramaphosa moved on to addressing the crisis at Eskom where he was emphatic that the unbundling of Eskom was not “a path to privatisation”.