By Tula Dlamini
Harare - 2010 Easter weekend. Enter Julius Malema – the ANC youth league leader who thought endorsing President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party and dismissing the opposition MDC, was a solid plan. ZANU PF is the party after all – hailed by some for pioneering Zimbabwe’s Independence from Britain, never mind the European Union’s 200 member ‘list of shame’ that accuses the party’s leadership of crimes against humanity.
Allegations are collaborated by a string of human rights groups and scores of Zimbabwean citizens who say ZANU PF is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of political opponents – some allegedly buried in shallow graves.
Malema tried some damage control, saying he did not support ZANU PF’s use of violence, particularly during elections. But his reproach which was presumably meant to sound tough, came off like a paternal scolding: the typical "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again” defense. That is, if the ‘former freedom fighters’ are on the right side of the ‘diamond fields’, they can defend their gains by any means necessary, including impunity.
it was like a circus had come to Harare – except many could not wait for the circus to leave.
Malema may possibly face an internal disciplinary hearing within the ANC for insubordination. President Jacob Zuma is the principal mediator in delicate negotiations aimed at bringing about the full implementation of a power-sharing agreement by both ZANUPF and the opposition MDC parties and Malema's intrusion is seen as undermining those efforts.
In a public rebuke on 10 April 2010 - exacerbated by the bitter controversy over the ‘kill the boer’ lyrics of a song which Malema has refused to stop singing - even after being requested to do so by his own principals - Zuma described Malema's behaviour as "unacceptable", "totally out of order", "against ANC culture" and warranting "consequences". Zuma added: "We cannot and we will not side with any one of the (Zimbabwean) parties to the exclusion of others."
But that was only the beginning. The same day Malema got his telling from Zuma, a section of the Youth League accused Malema of "stealing" the conference in his home province of Limpopo, which ended with a leadership sympathetic to him being elected. At the height of tensions between pro- and anti-Malema camps, police helicopters were deployed to the conference venue, while police forced delegates from the hall to disperse using water cannons.
Regardless of one’s politics, views on race; either way, it is no secret that in spite of all the gains with regards race relations since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is once again at the threshold of a potential race war and that the nation building challenges transcend a one Julius Malema.
So it was when extremist right wing leader Eugene Terre’Blanche was brutally murdered, supporters of The Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) theorized that the attack constituted a declaration of war against Afrikaners and further alleged that since 1994 close to four thousand ‘white’ farmers had been murdered in farm attacks, with many being brutally tortured and/or raped. According their account, the murder of Terre’Blanche – their paramilitary leader was part of an ongoing preparation for an all out genocide against the Afrikaner community.
The AWB position is hotly contested. The Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks released by the South African Police Services in 2003 said out 3000 attacks from 1998 to 2001, motives were found in 2644 attacks; and that only 2% were attributed to race or political motive. The bulk of the incidents were linked to robbery, labour related issues and intimidation.
Add to the complex picture; trade unions and the likes of Malema accuse government of ignoring the ill-treatment of ‘black’ farm workers by the largely Afrikaner farming community. There are currently an estimated 40 000 commercial farmers in the country and according to the SA Institute for Race Relations, about 250 000 South Africans out of a total current population of approximately 47 million have been murdered in the farms.
Of-course, the AWB’s selective decoding of the problem, Malema’s boer bashing and his responses to the murder of Terre’Blanche, the ‘ultimate boer’, all have but serve to distract focus on the real issues facing both farmers and farm workers, and instead catapults the AWB to the position of champion defenders of the white tribe of Africa.
The AWB stands for a separate homeland for the Afrikaner people. Malema is obviously threatened by such notions. He perceives the idea of a separate homeland for the Afrikaners in the same light as the system of apartheid, under which expensive cars, designer cloths and golfing would be the preserve for white people while fake designer labels and caddies are reserved for non-white people. And what of the side pistols, knives and paramilitary uniforms of the AWB? This kind of posturing has not served to allay fears of a white right-wing militant backlash. More over, the 1994 memories of AWB members detonating bombs in urban locations, including one at Johannesburg's main airport – remain fresh in the minds of many.
Put bluntly, in spite of some measurable gains with respect to achieving racial harmony, the country remains a racially segregated society. However, truth be told, while it could be argued that Malema’s pin-pointing of the ‘AWB’s racial bigotry’ has a basis; it is equally ingenious for any leader worth his or her salt to assume that inflammatory remarks can contribute towards nation building. For goodness sake, someone must assume the moral high ground and accept the merit in what the late Ghandi used to say; “an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind”.
My shared view – not original – is that just as it was in the heydays of apartheid, racial elites (both black and white), today use the race card to drive a wedge between people who would otherwise come together to challenge the elite norms, in particular, the gross primitive capital accumulation that has tended to characterize political and business leadership in South Africa.
It is not as if racists of all shades have no other choice: They can push for a non-racial society —that is, can refuse to endorse either white or black supremacy or centrality — or better still, push for democratic citizenship. In other words - one can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being of a particular race (weather it is Black Economic Empowerment or traditional white centrality) or, one can struggle for democratic citizenship regardless of racial profile. Clearly, one can not do both.
Need l add that ‘human beings have the same origin and that dividing people by "race" is merely a reaction of fear. Unfortunately, cowardice is not an enviable quality either. It simply does not have a good track record of survival’. That is why Malema‘s fear of ‘white centrality’ is not inspiring – in fact, un-constructive, discordant and counter-productive. It is this kind of political behavior that has the ‘bad boy’ leader wearing out his welcome with sections of the ANC.
In Malema, the ANC faces a social engineering test. The big question though is: Owing to the racial and political polarization Malema seems to foster, will the ANC and its tripartite leadership seek his negation or outright demotion? There are suggestions that his obsession with ‘race politics’, questionable class consciousness and lack of collective discipline, renders him worthless in the context of a holistic struggle for social transformation.
Whatever fate the ANC decides for Malema, it might be worth recalling Frantz Fanon’s argument in "The Wretched of the Earth" (1961); that revolutionary movements can not afford to exclude the most spontaneous and radical amongst their ranks since these elements are equally susceptible to being co-opted by counterrevolutionary forces. Therefore, Fanon claimed, education and not alienation of these elements should be central to revolutionary strategy. Of-course, the ANC might add that learning is a voluntary attribute and that the struggle for social transformation includes acknowledging when individual actors outlive their usefulness with respect to particular tasks.
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