African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) leader Julius Malema claimed to be living on handouts from friends and insisted that he did not benefit from tenders, the Mail & Guardian reported on Friday.

In an interview at his Sandton, Johannesburg home, he said: "I am not rich. I do not have millions as reported.

"All my houses have got bonds. They are financed by banks. I've never got any lucrative tender from anybody, including the company called SGL.

"I live on handouts most of the time. If I don't have food to eat, I can call Cassel Mathale [Premier of Limpopo] and say: 'Chief, can you help me? I've got nothing here.' I can call Thaba Mufamadi [Limpopo MEC], I can call Pule Mabe [ANCYL treasurer-general] or Mbalula [Fikile Mbalula, Deputy Minister of Police]. They all do the same with me. That's how we have come to relate to each other.

"That's why at times you can't even see our poverty because we cover each other's back. As comrades, we have always supported each other like that."

If anyone had concrete evidence that he manipulated tender processes in Limpopo, they should report him to the police.  If the State found millions in his account, they should taken them and given to institutions that help poor children.

He believed that proposed lifestyle audits of public officials were "factional" and targeting people in the ANC and defended threats to reveal personal details of reporters, following stories of his lifestyle over the last weeks.

The stories were done without verifying facts and the league decided to know more about the reporters, insisting that journalists could be bribed.

On his repeated singing of "shoot the boer", he explained that he had been singing it for nine years.

"The tendency is to use everything to discredit the youth league and create unnecessary fear among white minorities. But you should know that these people undermine the intellectual capacity of African masses."

On whether he was fuelling racism, he said that racial divisions still existed and asked why there had been no marches for farm workers who had been killed.

He believed that Equality Court magistrate Colleen Collis was influenced by newspapers when she found him guilty of hate speech relating to comments he made about a woman who accused President Jacob Zuma of rape.

"She did not apply her mind."

He felt that DA leader Helen Zille's calling him an "uncircumcised boy" was a great insult, especially coming from a white woman.