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ID President Patricia de Lille has called on the South African Revenue Service (SARS) ‘to tell us if [ANC Youth League Leader] Julius Malema has paid his taxes.

‘It is very difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he has already lied about what he earns - saying he was a middle income earner - and also about the fact that like so many other ANC leaders, he has made millions from Government tenders,' Ms De Lille says.

The ID Leader says she is sure ‘this information that has been released about Malema is part of the wider battle between the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the ANCYL and I am also sure that in the next week or so there will be more revelations about the business interests of other leaders and their wives.

‘However, with the ANC's front company Chancellor House standing to make money off electricity price increases and Cabinet ministers becoming embroiled in squabbles over the leadership of state-owned enterprises because their own companies stand to gain from their interference, it would have been very naive to have thought that the ANCYL leader would have turned out to be any different,' says De Lille.

‘Everyone now knows that an ANC position as an office bearer or minister guarantees them millions and billions, while the poor that they claim to represent are quietly subdued with social grants and empty revolutionary talk.

‘Meanwhile, the structure of our economy remains the same, the only change being that while the majority continue to be marginalised and ill-treated, the very few Malemas of our country are cashing in on their misery,' De Lille says.

‘These business practices in the ANC are no longer the exception to the rule, they are now the rule. The ruling party is taking our country down a very slippery slope.

‘At the very least Malema should stop pretending to represent the poor when he is living in opulence earned from the poor and ordinary taxpayers in a society plagued by the worst inequalities in the world,' says De Lille.