Julius Malema is the person we (or some people) love to hate. He is the butt of all jokes, an answer to the cartoonist’s prayer. Just how seriously should we take Juju, this man who is ‘married to the ANC’, who is ready to ‘kill for Zuma’, this ihlongandlebe (Fred Khumalo) who trades in insults and thinly veiled threats, who plays the race card shamelessly, and who parades his new-found wealth?
Crown Prince or Clown Prince? Serious threat or stand-up comic? Lekota compares him to the ‘child soldiers’ who have caused mayhem across Africa. Is he one of the ‘never-ending parade of corrupt clowns’ who are ‘drunkenly driven by a culture of entitlement’ (Breytenbach)? One of the new rising class of ‘tenderpreneurs’ who milk the system for what they can get? Or does he channel the discontent of millions of young black South Africans? Or is he all of the above?
All this points to the sorry decline in our public life, where name-calling and the exchange of insults become a substitute for informed debate. It also points to the apparent degeneration of the ANC. The language that Malema uses sometimes echoes that of the corrupt and ruthless despot who still rules Zimbabwe with a fist of iron. Yet it strikes a chord. One can discern a pattern: first the outrageous comment or insult – then the apology. But what one remembers is the deliberate provocation. One suspects that he knows just what he is doing. . . .
Just how much power and influence does Malema wield? Is he just a ‘useful idiot’ whose excesses will be tolerated (because he helped to deliver the youth vote – and because he helped to pave the way for Zuma’s rise to power)? He is clearly arrogant, ignorant, militant, intolerant and opportunistic – a demagogue in the making (but not an idiot!). How much licence will the ANC allow him? In the worst case scenario, might they find that he is beyond their power to recall? Do we laugh at him at our own peril?
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