The man playing South Africa's death card

The man playing South Africa's death card
As white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche is buried, the dangerously charismatic Julius Malema threatens the country's future, says Rian Malan.
By Rian Malan
Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League leader Photo: REUTERS

We are not here to mourn the white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche, whose funeral took place yesterday, but since his name is on the world's lips, let's face the truth: the saddest thing about his murder last weekend is that it obscured an event that casts an infinitely darker shadow.
The event took place in Zimbabwe, and involved, as fate would have it, Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League leader whose repeated singing of an old struggle song about shooting Boers is viewed by many Afrikaners as an incitement towards precisely the sort of violence that claimed Terreblanche's life. Even as an iron bar shattered the old right-winger's skull, Malema was in Harare, feasting with Robert Mugabe and picking up tips on how best to destroy the teetering remnants of Western influence here in South Africa. Terreblanche's murder was an individual tragedy. Malema's actions threaten to destroy an entire subcontinent.
Julius Malema is a chubby man-child who rose to prominence as Jacob Zuma's attack dog, threatening violence against anyone who sought to block the Zulu patriarch's rise to the state presidency. When Zuma emerged triumphant, Malema found himself in the pound seats. A poorly educated 28-year-old, he mysteriously acquired two posh houses, a fleet of cars and an obscenely expensive Breitling watch – curious accessories for a man who positions himself as champion of the poor.
Malema openly professes dislike for "children of the colonialists", a term he insists is not synonymous with white people. At other times, he says he doesn't hate white people, just the quality of "whiteness". In Malema's circle, this sort of juvenile wordplay passes as intellectuality. His utterances are often buffoonish, his politics a mix of crude populism and sinister racial demagoguery.
Malema is the vulgarian who dismissed the woman who laid a rape charge against Zuma as a slut, arguing that any female who stays for breakfast in rape's aftermath "clearly enjoyed herself". He levelled similar slurs at Opposition leader Helen Zille, calling her "a racist little girl" who slept with all her male colleagues. In every case, he seemed to relish the resulting outrage, especially if it came from whites. But this was a sideshow. In South Africa, the real struggle is the struggle between rival ANC factions, eager for power and its spoils. It is in this arena that Malema's behaviour acquires a disturbing cast.
When Jacob Zuma came to power a year ago, most observers were expecting a sharp turn Leftward, but the Zulu patriarch was at pains to allay such concerns. He toured the UK and Europe, assuring financiers that their investments were safe in South Africa. A few months later, Malema begged to differ: nationalisation is very much on the cards, he said. Zuma's minister of mines, Susan Shabangu, issued a stern reprimand, saying that South Africa's minerals would never be nationalised "in my lifetime". Malema just laughed, accusing Shabangu of "sucking up to monopoly capital" and hinting she would soon be out of a job.
In African culture, it is shameful to address one's elders in this manner, but Malema got away with it. Emboldened, he took to excoriating his superiors for placing key economic ministries in the hands of whites and Indians. Then he picked a fight with cabinet minister Jeremy Cronin, South Africa's most visible white Communist, who had dared to opine that his enthusiasm for nationalisation had much to do with a fondness for bling and nothing to do with the plight of the poor. In response, Malema reportedly sent Cronin a threatening SMS: "Wait to see what's coming to you."
Alarm was mounting, but Malema appeared untouchable. Two weeks ago, he made an extraordinary speech at the wedding of Robert Gumede, an IT entrepreneur grown rich off government contracts. Grinning malevolently, Malema warned Gumede that the masses were coming to take his money away. Billionaire Patrice Motsepe and ANC treasurer Mathews Phosa were told to expect a similar fate. Zola Skweyiya, South Africa's high commissioner in the UK, was mocked as a coward who had become "scared" of foreign capitalists. "Skweyiya is telling investors in London that nationalisation of mines will not happen," said Malema. The youth leader clearly had other ideas.
Insulting a man of Skweyiya's stature is an unspeakable violation of African etiquette. Malema's utterances were also an outrageous violation of his party's standing policy on nationalisation. I assumed the ANC's elders now had no choice other than to put him firmly in his place. I was wrong. No one said a word.
It was against this backdrop that Malema set forth for Zimbabwe last weekend. In the past, he has always hewed to the ANC line: Mugabe's disastrous policies will not be emulated in South Africa. The rule of law will be upheld, the constitution respected. There will be no land invasions, no nationalisation of mines or businesses.
But something has clearly changed. On his trip to Harare, Malema was met at the airport by a clutch of notorious profiteers whose connection to the great dictator enabled them to grow rich even as their country died. These "vultures" are said to be slavering at the prospect of another killing as Mugabe moves to dismember Zimbabwe's last surviving businesses and mines in the name of "indigenisation".
By all accounts, Malema was thrilled to make their acquaintance. They organised a crowd to sing his controversial song about shooting Boers. Then they whisked him off in a presidential Mercedes Benz and put him up in Harare's most expensive hotel. In return, Malema expressed his unqualified admiration for the policies that have ruined Zimbabwe and vowed to press for their adoption south of the Limpopo River.
"In South Africa, we are just starting," said Malema. "Here you are already very far. We are very happy today that you can account for more than 300,000 new farmers, against the 4,000 who used to dominate agriculture. We hear you are now going straight to the mines. That's what we are going to be doing in South Africa. We want the mines. They have been exploiting our minerals for a long time. Now it's our turn also to enjoy from those minerals…"
On Thursday, Malema reiterated these sentiments at a press conference marked by an ugly racial attack on a BBC reporter. There has been no repudiation. The silence says something truly ominous: Malema has protection. Someone in the ANC – either the president himself, or an awesomely powerful faction inside the party – is encouraging him to rally the masses for a Zimbabwe-style obliteration of Africa's only viable economy and last surviving hope.
I thought that only the South African Communist Party (SACP) was capable of irrationality on such a dumbfounding scale. I was wrong. Malema is not a tool of the SACP. In fact, he's at constant odds with the SACP's leadership. The other day he even resurrected Pretoria's old Red Menace theory, accusing "yellow Communists" – a veiled reference to Indians in the party's leadership – of plotting to control the ANC by secret means. Anyone who voices such painful truths cannot possibly be an ally of the SACP.
Besides, the Reds are fairly sophisticated, whereas Malema's every utterance is a cringe-inducing embarrassment. Listen to him in Harare last Saturday: "They are so bright, so colourful, we refer to them as white people. Maybe their colour came as a result of exploiting our minerals and perhaps if some of us get opportunities in these minerals we can develop a nice colour like them." This is not a coldly scientific Marxist-Leninist. It's Pere Ubu or Idi Amin.
It could be that President Zuma has simply lost control of the ANC, or that Malema is the puppet he uses to mouth ideas too radical to emerge from the presidency. If you ask me, Malema is the point-man for a powerful ANC faction whose motive is greed and whose chosen weapon is racial demagoguery of the most primitive kind.
The trouble is that this card trumps all others. Our underclass is huge, poorly educated and desperately poor. They know what happened in Zimbabwe, but even so, the prospect of loot is irresistible, and that's Malema's bait. Mandela gave them free houses. Mbeki gave them welfare grants, leading to a situation where five million taxpayers support 13 million indigents, with the total rising far more rapidly than our ability to pay. Now Malema and the faceless vultures behind him are offering them the rest. They are playing the death card, the Ace of Spades.

( Reuters)
Te morituri salutant

Shooting comments 'worrisome': police
Source: Citizen Alert ZA JOHANNESBURG - The Pan Africanist Congress Youth League’s threat to kill ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and Malema’s recent singing of “shoot the boer” were worrisome, the police ministry said on Friday.“It is worrying... it doesn’t bode very well for society. It is worrying,” said Zweli Mnisi, spokesman for Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa.“In that spirit of really building a nation, it is really quite worrisome,” he said after the PACYL threatened to kill Malema.“We are saying to Malema to apologise within five days or we will injure him to death... He will either end up in a hospital or in a mortuary,” PACYL president Pitso Mphasha said at a press conference held earlier on Friday.The PACYL and the ANCYL are at loggerheads over who arranged the Sharpeville pass law uprising of 1960 -- in which police shot dead 69 people.At a commemoration on Monday, Malema said the protest had been organised by the ANC, but was then hijacked by the Pan Africanist Congress. The PAC is outraged at this suggestion.Mphasha said the threat to Malema was a way of teaching Malema discipline the “militant way”.The ANCYL said it would respond once it had received the ultimatum directly from the PACYL, and not from a press report.Malema has also come under fire recently for singing the phrase “shoot the boer”, which has offended organisations like AfriForum, which has threatened legal action if Malema does not apologise in writing by 4pm on Friday.“It has gone a bit far,” said AfriForum spokesman Willie Spies, in response to the PACYL threat.“It actually shows how dangerous these kinds of remarks are and how critical it is to get rid of these remarks and to get it out of our system.Spies said that freedom of expression was important in a democracy, but could become uncontrollable if used in a divided society. “And that is what I am hearing now.”AfriForum would seek an urgent court interdict to stop Malema from singing the lyrics “shoot the boer” if he failed to apologise, he said.Spies said he did not miss the irony that this may have the effect of “protecting Malema against himself”.“This is not only to protect the victims of what is being said, but also to protect Mr Malema against himself because he is causing a great deal of harm to himself.“... This is not only good for us, but it is also good for him.”-SapaCitizenComments by SonnyWhy did the minister not have the balls to do something before the banning of thesong?Because he is part of the onslaught against the culture of the Afrikaners!One just has to take his remarks he made about farm murders.We could also have been singing cultural songs! Malema still has an appointment with the PAC this week!Digging thru the dirt to get to the TRUTH!Read the Full Story at Citizen Alert ZA