Juju bashing isn’t as much fun as it used to be. If you type Malema into Google, the second suggestion the browser makes is “Malema jokes”. The latest one is that his girlfriend has twins and Malema is wondering which of them is his. I’m not entirely comfortable with such jokes; I know some people laughing have a racist tinge to their enjoyment — to them it fits in the category of “stupid Bantu” jibes.
Malema was poorly educated. Apartheid wrecked his primary education. The ANC did the rest. He has been raised by the party since he was eight years old. He is their end product.
But Malema is far from stupid. He is, however, often uncouth, even thuggish. He can also be charming. If I were still an arts manager, I’d want to sign him up yesterday. He could make a great career as a comedian, and I do not mean that in any deriding way. If you’re not convinced of his stand-up talents, look here. I’d pay for a ticket to see such a show.
As a performer he could flaunt his bling to his heart’s content. There would be celebrity appearances, stretch limousines and all-night parties. He could fill his belly with champagne. No more ill-gotten gains; he’d be legit.
Juju, you see, knows his lines and he tells home truths in an amusing way, enough to make the ANC senior leadership wince with embarrassment because he holds up to them a mirror for their hypocrisy and failures.
The problem is Malema thinks like a gangster; he doesn’t actually know how to play the game of politics. Politicians know it’s a game of Scrabble, and you need to be able to spell and score points by strategically placing your words. Malema took the Scrabble set and tried to play Snakes and Ladders with it. First he threw a few double sixes, then he slid to the bottom — for now at least.
Witness his repeated political flip flops: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was trashed, then hallowed; President Jacob Zuma hallowed then trashed; currently former president Thabo Mbeki is in for his second round of glorification, having been rubbished in between. Perhaps in his current disciplinary process Malema hopes the same will be done with him.
Where Malema was particularly thick (or naïve, though that doesn’t seem the right adjective for the richest little poor kid) was in his belief in the ANC’s bullshit. By bullshit I mean of course the national democratic revolution. Publically Malema took Zuma, the champion of the Polokwane resolutions, at his word, only to find out that the ANC is a party of mostly rhetoric.
Whatever its bluster, the ANC is at the bottom a culturally conservative, politically centre-right, economically neoliberal party. Given the likes of Malema as an alternative, many might be saying: “Long may it stay that way.” But they would be wrong. The socio-economic hell too many find themsevles in won’t go away until the ANC makes some fundamental shifts.
Which brings me to the real point of this particular blog. Malema was for a long time a very convenient youth when he helped sweep Zuma to power. Then again when he served the ends of the predatory elite. As Jeremy Cronin, just days ago, reiterated: nationalisation was a “debate driven, at least initially, by indebted BEE mining investors seeking a bail-out … it was also based on a particular version of the state — a bureaucracy that could be factionally and parasitically captured in order to advance specific private accumulation agendas” — a view which got him into a tit for tat spat with Malema a few years ago.
But then Malema overreached. His shenanigans kept eroding the ANC’s traditional containment strategy over factionalism; at one stage the public image of the ANC began to resemble that custard pie slapstick show called Cope.
Besides the charges levelled at Malema in the disciplinary hearing — valid charges but part of a deeply hypocritical process — he must take some responsibility for the failure of cohesion among the “coalition of the wounded” that brought Zuma to power. Imagine if the ANC Youth League had galvanised the left by making common cause with the alliance partners? Instead he offered the last thing anyone needs: African national socialism — Mugabe style.
Ironically, as convenient as Malema was for the ascendant in the ANC, so he has been almost as convenient a youth for all those colonial, imperialist, capitalist, apartheid beneficiaries Malema sees as ranked against him. Which is why he became a media creation – a sort of “Jihad Jane” or “Balloon Boy” or the guy in the Big Brother house everyone hated but loved to watch, anticipating the day he would finally be evicted.
For in Juju, his capitalist enemies have had a (news)paper tiger as opponent. He doesn’t actually speak for the poor, the landless or the youth. Instead he represents the aspirant political entrepreneurs of the party’s lower ranks and their zombie army; a brat who has turned distributive justice into nothing more than “the politics of the belly”.
He has brought the ANC into disrepute as a voice for the poor. A long history of abuse of power and serious corruption charges hang over him, with mounting evidence as the financial carnival of his home province Limpopo unravels where he and his cronies have exerted the most actual influence. In the eyes of many, he is utterly discredited.
Hence his failure to mobilise a mass base. As analyst Steven Friedman pointed out, there were twice as many people protesting about the state of our school libraries than turned up at Malema’s economic march.
He has allowed his enemies to simply point to corruption and cronyism as the real cause of service delivery failure in Limpopo and elsewhere. As he told the ANC Youth League at their Sandton convention: “There is no woodwork that is going to run economy”.
I still have confidence in our judicial process that — barring procedural mistakes, double agendas in the intelligence services, political cover-ups in the province, undue executive influence over the prosecuting authorities, and any incompetence by the investigators — Malema will be brought to a fair trial.
But here is the crux: the calls Malema made will no longer be so easy to dismiss once the straw man in whom they were conveniently located is gone. Malema became the story, not the issues, and that has been his greatest failing.
With a world economy in serious trouble, the prospects of addressing unemployment are dimming, and government’s current economic policies are unlikely to pass the stress test.
How will the political storm be managed when the jobs promised do not materialise? Will the nation’s unhappy youth and voiceless poor ever find credible representation? Or will our government and the private sector leave us to wait for the next Pied Piper?
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“Malema was poorly educated. Apartheid wrecked his primary education.”
This may be a bit unfair. A well-known Afrikaans writer, a white woman who taught in the black schools, recently stuck her neck out claiming that apartheid education for blacks wasn’t all that different to what whites were getting and the quality of the teachers wasn’t any less either. And the historian, Herman Giliomee, has claimed that in an international maths olympiad conducted in the 60′s SA black pupils beat out US black pupils. Of course, black schooling suffered after 1976 when the rallying cry became “liberation before education” and many schools were burnt down as a result, but that is not the fault of apartheid education per se.
Robarb # There is some truth to what you say. But if you read up on the conditions where Malema grew up it doesn’t sound great. It was also during the most tumultuous years. He was 13 in 1994. According to at least one account, oft repeated, he was making petrol bombs when he should have been in school (though this is not mentoned or refuted in Fiona Forde’s biography of him).
The ANC started a black on black war in the townships in the mid-1980s, because otherwise South Africa would have moved to peaceful change and they would have been a footnote of history.
If Malema was caught up in it – he was not the only one by far.
The ONLY thing that interests me about Malema is WHERE did his money come from, and HOW does he justify his lifestyle with the claim to being champion of the poor?
Your false praise and unjust condemnation of Malema is disingenuous and serves no purpose. How about addressing the legitimate ISSUES that Malema has constantly and courageously raised – land expropriation, nationalization, racism etc? These are the issues the privileged 1%, the direct beneficiaries of apartheid want to avoid at all costs in order to cling onto their privileges and ill-gotten gains. It is a grave injustice to our democracy for the beneficiaries of apartheid to simply shoot the messenger using the politics of personal character assassination. Remember that early warning systems used in the old mines- the canary in a coal mine?
Well Brent Meersman, when the economic recession tightens its grips in SA you may not be too happy with the next “Pied Piper”. Better the devil you know!
The is a danger of a sort of Macarthyist smelling-out of racism behind every bush in the opening of this piece, reminiscent of the Nats finding everyone who opposed apartheid (including the Black Sash, the SAIRR, the Progs/DA, the Churches, even) to be communists. People make Juju jokes for the same reason they make Sarah Palin jokes in the USA – both make dumb remarks (don’t confuse cunning with intelligence) and appeal to basest populism. His leaked “F” for woodwork did not help his image.
Personally I think that the “F” is “over-rated”. I wonder how many professors or senior counsel know which end of a screwdiver is up or can drive in a nail without hitting their thumb. There is also the puzzling fact-bit that Malema was writing university exams at the time of his disciplinary hearing last year, though the media have not reported on what he is studying or what results he obtained.
As for his lack of formal education: Bill Gates dropped out of university (perhaps that explains why Microsoft products are so buggy), Edison dropped out of kindergarten after months (his teacher said his brain was “addled”) and Louis Botha dropped out around Standard Three. It is also said that the Oxbridge set looked down on young Billy Shakespeare ‘cos of his lack of degrees. American presidents who dropped out of school include Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Zacahry Taylor, George Washington, Grover Cleveland and Millard Fillmore, though many completed their…
You write Malema’s obituary at your own peril. Malema is here to stay in South African politics.
Bra, why are you still going on about this? I mean seriously, you spent more than half of the article rehashing what everyone has already said and ended off with a short conclusion that we’re still f****d – we all knew this. I mean it doesn’t really make sense because your title is about Malema.
@Dave Harris I understand your view, though I wasn’t being disingenious. I will soon be addressing the 1%.
My whole point is Malema allowed everyone to play the man and not the ball, the issue. This wasn’t simply a matter of the media constructing him to take him down, or of character assassination. Malema played the man, himself – his bling, his courting of controversy (often destructive to political strategy) etc.
Ultimately he betrayed his own cause by getting into shady deals and flaunting his wealth. Hani never let himself get in the way of his cause.
Why didn’t Malema join forces with the left if he really wanted to further distributve justice? He just played ANC politics.
I seldom attack an individual, but I think Malema must be able to take what he dishes, and boy does he dish it to people.
This is the issue I have always had with Julius – his intentions are good, but his execution is horrendous. This basically reduces him to a populist issue-basher, with a default boilerplate of ‘blame the colonialists / imperialists / ‘. Here’s the real measure – what has the ANCYL done for the youth of this country? Surely that is their remit?
Pardon me, but this is rubbish. Malema, for all his faults, is about the only major public figure to stand up for social democracy. That is why Jeremy Cronin — a toady of the minerals-energy complex — smeared him with the usual Stalinist lies. It’s been the attack on Malema, and the general destruction of free political debate within the ANC by the Zuma clique, which has done so much damage to the party and to its image.
Malema had nothing to do with that.
Let sleeping dogs lie, please. This man has hogged enough media space for a lifetime.
Best point made in this article is:
“He doesn’t actually speak for the poor, the landless or the youth. Instead he represents the aspirant political entrepreneurs of the party’s lower ranks and their zombie army; a brat who has turned distributive justice into nothing more than “the politics of the belly”.”
Malema is more a product of tenderpreneurship and the rot that endless BEE is causing than of apartheid. When you understand that the plundering that has gone on by politicians in the name of redistribution is finite, you realise that the new generation need to stoke new fears to recieve their billions. Those fears are stoked by Malema and his crew every time they bash on about nationalisation, land redistribution and any other emotive issue you can think of. The ANC has full power in SA, it could institute any of these tomorrow but it knows that the end result will be chaos. Time and good policy will change things in SA now, not revolution by the youth.
An uncommonly well reasoned view of Mr Malema, Brent.
Motivation even in those we know (or in ourselves, come to that) is extremely difficult to judge and without knowing Mr Malema personally it becomes impossible to know his.
He certainly seems to be grossly inept politically, but then many of us are at 30 – though not those, perhaps, destined to succeed in politics. On the other hand, you could argue his blatant and unashamed flip flops stem from an firm grasp of – you might say contempt for – the nature of SA ‘democracy’ at this stage. The road to success is not via standing with the voters, still less clear policy or principle, but through caucusing and building your position in the ruling party; though, of course, Mr Malema seems to have got that wrong too by failing to see the critical difference between the youthful rebellion of the 1940s generation and how to be acceptably radically youthful today. He consequently made enemies on all sides, like the man he now turns to desperately again, Thabo Mbeki. Hard to imagine there is really any love lost there.
Another explanation is that the easy money and the huge publicity simply went to Julius Malema’s head. Perhaps he acutally took the adulation of a few and cynical praise of his calculating elders seriously.
“The ANC started a black on black war in the townships in the mid-1980s…”
Cheerleader, cheerleader, oh cheerleader! You are still hellbent on airbrushing history? Even a Grade R pupil knows, and has read, about the impact of SDUs [self-defence units, in case you are in the dark] that fanned the flames in the townships by repeatedly supplying arms caches to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), as widely reported in the TRC. Do the names Phillip Powell and Joe Mamasela ring any bell?
And then:
“…because otherwise South Africa would have moved to peaceful change and they would have been a footnote of history.”
Oh boy (or girl?), I am willing to pay for your refresher course in Philosophy 101 (so you can construct infallible arguments). Just drop me your student account number, and will make the EFT payment, will you?
Please leave us our jokes. Individuals of all colours at least got the chance to laugh at and with Gatiep, John, Van der Merwe and Mohammed. If the ANC and cohorts would only realise that teasing is a form of endearment, a signal of acceptance, it would go a lot farther. Organisations that refuse to acknowledge their own idiosyncracies don’t understand the truths about themselves.
Now that PC behaviour rules out the jokes, we’ve all become far too serious.
@ Loudly SAfrican # and MLH #
Thanks for comment, but I did not mean to be censure humour. Which is why it is stated that personally I am “not entirely comfortable” and specified “some people” not everyone enjoying the joke.
nzs
“The ANC started a black on black war in the townships in the 1980s”
Yes it did! The proof is in the book “People’s War” by Anthea Jeffreys.
There is considerable proof in other books as well, but I don’t want to load you down with too much homework.
Bra, when you say it like that it sounds much cooler. Kudos. Respect.
Cheerleader,
Just drop me an SMS once the first-year orientation is over, so I can effect payment. You have quite A LOT to learn in the Philosophy 101 course. And don’t be too hard on yourself, dear; not only will you make big strides, but you will soon find reason to show them that you can come with better ways of arguing. Who said it’s wiser to throw the baby out with the bath water?
Does the phrase “third force” ring any bell? And with your youthful posture of infallibility, you make me SO proud!
@Lyndall, you shouldnt believe everything you read. That is very very dangerous. Where is your tools of analysis?
Against the backdrop of the overload of JM, I am left feeling terrible. Terrible simply because we as SAn’s got caught up in the hype, Terrible because we failed a promising leader, Terrible because we lacked responsibility to correct.
Where did JM come from and how did he manage to become so prominent in the news. I doubt he has the influence in the movement that is seemingly being portrayed. I doubt that he wields that much power even in YL. So where is this influence coming from? Who built this image. Sure JM played to the gallery. Sure he said many an outrageous thing. But so has youth leaders from DA or Afriforum. In fact some of Afriforum youth leaders or even AWB beliefs border on criminal. And yet, there has been no hype around their utterings.
But JM has been built as a certain character and sure the movers and shakers behind the JM image has not helped him. But the problem is simply that we have failed to engage with JM responsibly. We have engaged with him in a certain way, for obvious reasons, And now that the outcome is what it is, we are doing the ‘death dance” similarly to the ‘saddam husein – statue dance’. Shame on all of us!
Tofilux
The media seeks senation and makes the news when there is no news – which is how JM became what he is.
This is not a new phenonomen. I have just finished reading the book “The Rise of the the Indian Rope Trick: how a spectacular hoax became history” by Peter Lamont who is both an amusing writer and a historian who does meticulous reseach.
The whole belief in the Indian Rope Trick was started by a journalist trying to increase circulation figures for his father’s newspaper. The journalist, John E Wilkie , later became the first chief of the Secret Service in America.
Jules ain’t going nowhere so he can’t be missed.
Whatever sanction the ANC hierarchy has placed on him will just intensify his popularity amongst a significant group of mainly young mainly poorly educated demoralised folk who have been let down by their hallowed leaders.
He is a fallacious symbol of hope to a generation who sense that liberation has somehow eluded them.
”
Brent – you make a mistake by trying to reason with the thuggish Dave Harris. Remember that bullies are also cowards. Nothing gives them more delight than seeing someone apparently grovel and try to engage in a reasonable way with intimidation. You need to stand up and confront thugs directly.
702′s Udo Carelse expressed quite vocal support for Malema this morning on the grounds that he’s good for our politics because “he tests our Chapter 9 institutions.” That’s like saying Omar Al Bashir is good for international law because he “tests the institution of the international criminal court.” Ridiculous.
Suggesting that he has a role to play in our politics because he holds a mirror up to the ANC, and raises critical and embarrassing issues, would be an insult to the intelligence of a moron. Such an assertion is predicated upon his genuine concern about youth unemployment, the poor, and the land hungry. Show me one action which demonstrates such concern over self interest.
Whilst he is undoubtedly down right now, I’m not stupid enough to suggest that he’s out. He’ll make a comeback, believe me, but it’s the lengths he will go to now in pursuit of his own agenda (and his own it’s always ever been) that should concern us, now that even the flexible constraints of the ANC will no linger be an impediment to his growing megalomania.