S.Africa's Malema apology over 'racist girl' insults

CAPE TOWN (AFP) - South Africa's axed youth leader Julius Malema was ordered Thursday to apologise to the country's main opposition leader whom he called "a racist little girl" running an apartheid regime.

Malema and suspended African National Congress (ANC) youth league spokesman Floyd Shivambu agreed to apologise to Western Cape provincial Premier Helen Zille after a settlement was reached in a high court in the defamation case.

The league's leaders fired a series of salvos at Zille in 2009 in 2010 that labelled her as "racist, colonialist and imperialist", her Democratic Alliance youth league as "garden boys" and the Western Cape an "apartheid regime".

Zille was also accused of appointing an all-male cabinet made up of "boyfriends and concubines" so that she could have sex with them, after the ANC lost control of the province in polls three years ago.

This was after she accused President Jacob Zuma of being a womaniser and putting his multiple wives at potential risk to HIV.

It is not the first time that Malema's mouth has landed him in hot water and he was booted from the ANC in April for sowing division in the party and bringing it into disrepute.

Malema, Shivambu and the youth league agreed to apologise, retract their comments and pick up Zille's legal bills in the settlement which was made an order of the court.