Is Malema SA’s lone voice of conscience?

Lovemore Ranga Mataire
SOUTH Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters party leader Julius Malema is many things to different people.
In some sections, he is an uneducated rabble-rouser who is generally regarded as politically “dangerous, radical, racist, bigoted, stupid, corrupt and ignorant”, a narrow narrative woven into a damning dark tale.
Others, however, see Malema as the sole voice of conscience championing the rights of the downtrodden or those that are on the economic fringes of the so-called Rainbow Nation.

The fact that Malema’s party, barely a year old, has decided to enter the political fray in this year’s elections, presents a different and unpredictable dimension to the electoral outcome.

But even if his chances of an ultimate victory are remote, it is still important to examine the substance of the issues he is raising 20 years after Freedom Day. When South Africa achieved democratic rule in 1994, Malema was just 13 years old.

Despite his tender age, Malema rose through the ranks to become one of the most dominant voices articulating the aspirations of the once oppressed blacks.

“(However), for him and many others, 1994 did not bring transformation overnight. His teen years were very tough and the Malema family struggled to get by. The poverty that hung over that household in some ways became more endemic because it was one of the families that 1994 left behind,” writes Fiona Forde in “An Inconvenient Youth”, a biography on Malema. In short, Malema’s message to South Africa is simple and nakedly honest: in South Africa it is not yet uhuru.

Malema derives his moral mandate in raising these unfulfilled aspirations from his upbringing in one of the poorest suburbs (Disteneng) of South Africa. The young Malema knew nothing but poverty, a second class citizenship in his own country and the issues that he is raising resonate with the black majority in his country.

Malema is touching on hot political issues like land reform, the need to share wealth, nationalisation and the need for the African majority to be at the centre of decision-making processes. He is frustrated by the slow pace of transformation and on land South Africa’s majority population is still landless.

The second issue is that 20 years after majority rule white capital still rules the roost, the state’s grip on the economy is weak and the fact that so many of the large corporations are still controlled by whites does little to nurture solid state capital relations.

Third, its judiciary, which is lauded by many pundits as independent, is still a sad relic of the apartheid era despite being headed by a black judge. Fourth, Malema is convinced that the security sector in South Africa is maladjusted. For him, the Marikana massacres were a telling example of a force that has failed to adjust to the dynamics of majority rule.

It must, therefore, not be surprising that Malema finds refuge in Zanu-PF’s empowerment policies, while casting the MDC and Botswana’s ruling BDP party as agents of Western imperialism.

Malema’s ideological leanings are inimical to white hegemonic hold on the economy. The prospect of Malema forging a united front with Zanu-PF makes the white establishment in South Africa quiver with trepidation.

Soon after his visit to Zimbabwe a few months before his expulsion from the ANC, Malema made clear his ideological leanings at a Press conference when he said: “We want Zanu-PF to be retained in power. That’s what we want. We are not going to relate with some Mickey Mouse we don’t know. We relate with people we’ve got a history together (sic)’”.

Malema is a product of poverty, politics, power and a racial past. His anger must come as “no surprise in a society that is not only still divided along racial lines but tethering on a lethal mix of unfulfilled promises from the transition, gross inequality in socio-economic terms” and an ANC still ideologically transforming itself from a liberation movement into a political party.

The ANC is still searching for its soul and seemingly at a loss as to how to deal with emerging internal contradictions. It is in a state of interregnum – the old notions are slowly becoming obsolete while the new ones are still to be born and defined. It is this political vacuity that Malema occupies and manipulates.