The Economic Freedom Fighters has lashed out at billionaire businessman Elon Musk for urging President Donald Trump to declare its leader, Julius Malema, an international criminal.

In a statement on Sunday, Malema-led EFF said, “As part of the general hysteria that has overtaken governance in the United States of America (USA), Musk has assumed the role of a global billionaire maniac, whose grotesque wealth has overwhelmed him and made him think of himself as a supreme ruler of not only the Oval Office but of all nations of the world,” the EFF said.

It added, “It is therefore not surprising that Julius Malema would be declared an enemy by the global capitalist establishment, an agenda advanced by the likes of deranged individuals such as Elon Musk.”

According to EFF, the principle remains that equality in South Africa is rooted in the return of the land to African people, and this will be achieved through expropriation without compensation.

Additionally, the EFF makes a firm commitment that Elon Musk’s Starlink will never operate in South Africa, without complying to local legislation which demands that there must be 30 per cent local ownership.

Mr Malema’s party said it “takes this opportunity to tell Elon Musk and all of his allies, in the USA, in Israel and the right-wing groups in South Africa which have mobilised Musk, to collectively go to hell.”

EFF’s outburst followed Mr Musk’s call for its leader to be declared an international criminal. 

In a post on X on Sunday, Mr Musk accused Mr Malema of “calling for the genocide of white people in the country” after the South African politician said the black country would “cut the throat of whiteness.”

“These people, when you want to hit them hard, go after a white man,” Mr Malema said in a recent viral video. “They feel terrible pain because you have touched a white man; we’re cutting the throat of whiteness. We will kill white women, children, and their pets.”

A member of the South African Assembly and founder of EFF, Mr Malema, made this statement after Mr Trump’s executive order halting financial aid to South Africa over concerns that its recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 (Act) would deprive white farmers of swathes of land.