Update: Looks like Helen Zille and Julius Malema won’t be meeting for tea

Earlier this week, former Western Cape Premier Helen Zille invited EFF leader Julius Malema to be a part of her podcast, Tea With Helen.

Launched about a month ago, Tea With Helen takes the form of a one-on-one interview with some of South Africa’s biggest influencers, journalists and politicians.

On YouTube, the podcast already has around 3600 subscribers. Not a bad turnover for a medium that’s only just taking off in South Africa. That said, it seems the EFF commander-in-chief definitely isn’t a subscriber.

Zille invited Malema to “name the date, time and place” to meet to record an episode, while she’ll “serve the tea”. But it seems that Malema isn’t one for English Breakfast.

Late on Tuesday, he returned the invitation with this zinger out of nowhere:

I think you are lost, are you not looking for #SASSA offices?

— Julius Sello Malema (@Julius_S_Malema) October 1, 2019

Damn.

The tweet racked up just under 1000 replies in an hour, and caught the eye of some politicians too.

UDM leader Bantu Holomisa just had to mention Steinhoff, which features prominently in news surrounding the leader of Zille’s former political party.

Or Steinhof CEO’s offices .

— Bantu Holomisa (@BantuHolomisa) October 1, 2019

Minister of transport Fikile Mbalula also chimed in.

Jwala

— Minister of Transport |Mr Fix 100days (@MbalulaFikile) October 1, 2019

The general public, well, “felt the clap” too.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 that Clap.. I felt it!

— Odie (@odz2019) October 1, 2019

CIC just sent her straight to the cleaners pic.twitter.com/jS0zWkF72o

— Navigator!!! (@SkhumbuzoHadeb3) October 1, 2019

While Malema didn’t exactly say “no”, you probably shouldn’t get too excited to see two former political rivals face off in an intellectually stimulating conversation about South Africa, its issues, and the potential remedies.

It’s a shame, really.

Helen Zille responds to ‘lame’ SASSA joke

Not taking no for an answer, Zille late on Tuesday responded to Malema’s “lame joke”.

“Are you seriously ducking out of the debate with a lame “joke”? Let’s discuss the future of our country on a platform where we can go beyond 280c and get beneath the surface slogans,” she tweeted.

Are you seriously ducking out of the debate with a lame “joke”? Let’s discuss the future of our country on a platform where we can go beyond 280c and get beneath the surface slogans.

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) October 1, 2019

Feature image: The Democratic Alliance via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-SA, resized)