Popcorn minded scatter brain ANCYL political upstart Julius Malema
Julius Malema the Africa National Congress Youth League’s (ANCYL) paid old Zanu PF friends across the Limpopo a much desired solidarity visit recently.
While in Zimbabwe he revelled in the glare of political attention paid to him not just by supporters of his host party but also the international press and the MDC as well.
The controversial ANC upstart was overwhelmed and made the most of his visit to demonise the MDC and support Zanu PF’s dangerous policies.
It was the manner he identified with Zanu PF’s doomsday policies that made most of us pay attention to him.
Just like faeces deposited in the open attract flies Malema to us was a fly –the green bomber type –attracted to the stench that Zanu PF policies are in our beloved country.
We could not help but muse ourselves with him dragging the repute of the ANC to the pit latrine that Zanu PF is in Zimbabwe and in the eyes of many peace loving and democratic institutions the world over.
Malema’s visit allowed us rare insight into the democratic credentials underpinning today’s ANC and we were not impressed with the direction he intimated the party that produced freedom fighter icons like Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo is heading.
While in Zimbabwe another South African extremist and unrepentant racial supremacist Eugene Terreblanche was murdered diverting intensifying focus on Malema’s association with Zanu PF and his meeting with his political idol the octogenarian Zanu PF and Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.
After lecturing his hosts on how to win democratic elections without resorting to violence and promising them support to remain visibly vigilant without being violent he went back to his country and gave a press briefing presumably to update his constituency and party leadership on the Zimbabwe visit.
At that briefing Malema was at his best passing disparaging verdicts on the MDC.
He was angered that the Zimbabwe party with the Parliament majority had passed some uncomplimentary remarks about his party’s show of solidarity with Zanu PF when at regional level the ANC as well as South African President was mediating in Zimbabwe on behalf of SADC.
He described the criticism directed at his ill timed visit as being of no consequence to his party’s relations with Zanu PF.
He accused the MDC of being a party of cowards that are good for nothing other than whining and whingeing from the comfort of luxurious South African offices in uptown Sandtown instead of back home in Zimbabwe.
In his own disparaging words Malema said;
“These popcorn and mushrooming political parties in Zimbabwe, they will never find friendship in us. They can insult us here from air conditioned offices of Sandton, we are unshaken. They must stop shouting at us.
They must go and fight for their battle in Zimbabwe and win. If they got ground and they are formed on the basis of solid ground in Zimbabwe why are they speaking in Sandton and not Mashonaland or Matabeleland?
There is nothing Sandton in Zimbabwe. There is everything about the Zimbabwean.
Let them go back and fight there.
Even when the ANC was underground in exile, we had our internal underground forces fighting for freedom, and we have never spoken from exile.”
He was stopped by an interjection from an alert and smart BBC journalist Jonah Fisher who exposed Malema’s hypocrisy by remarking with disdainful cynicism- “You live in Sandton?”
Malema’s suspect temper popped like popcorn as he tore into the BBC scribe with venom intended to numb the BBC scribe into silence and show him that there was only one authority in the room and that was Malema.
The reporter would have none of that and laughed as Malema went ballistic. The exchanges that followed showed that Malema is nothing more than an intolerant demagogue or is it rather popcorn political upstart and are worth reproduction here.
“MALEMA: Let me tell you before you are tjatjarag (excitable) this is a building of a revolutionary party and you know nothing about the revolution.
FISHER: So they're not welcome in Sandton but you are?
MALEMA: Here you behave or else you jump.
FISHER: This is becoming a joke.
MALEMA: Don’t laugh!
Chief, (points at the back of the room), can you get security to remove this thingy.
If you are not going to behave, we are going to get security to take you out. This is not a newsroom this, this is a revolutionary house and you don’t come here with that white tendency, not here. You can do it somewhere else, not here.
If you have got a tendency of undermining blacks even where you work, you are in the wrong place. Here you are in the wrong place, and you can go out.
FISHER: But that’s rubbish!
MALEMA: You can go out … rubbish is what you have covered in that trouser – that is rubbish. That which you have covered in [your] clothes is rubbish, ok?
You are a small boy you can’t do anything. Go out … bastard! Go out! You bloody agent!
We cannot be allowed to be undermined in our own terrain, you can do that in your own offices, but here, once you come in here – this is not a playground, this is Luthuli House. It’s the headquarters of a revolutionary party which has liberated the people of South Africa.
Here, you come, you restrain yourself and behave in a manner that is befitting of being in the head quarters of the ANC. It’s not a beer-hall here, it’s not a drunk beer-hall – cheap beer-hall, this. And you ask anybody including political parties which tried to undermine this house what happened to them.
You can undermine all of us but not the house. Never undermine the house. When you are here, you are in a different terrain. You are in our space and you are going to behave in a manner that is befitting of being in the ANC office.
You don’t howl here especially when we speak and you behave like you are in an American press conference? This is not America, its Africa.
You must behave in an African way. If you are in Rome, you do as the Romans do. These things you write about us and insulting us, that is your space [and] you can do as you wish. We don’t have a problem with that and we have accepted that you are abusing that space [and] you are abusing us in that space.
You don’t come and abuse us in our own space, in our own house. This is my house and you will behave according to the rules of my house. We are not forcing anybody to be here. If you feel you are offended by the removal of this gentleman, you are most welcome to walk, you are free to go.
We don’t force anybody to come here. We would be worried if the SABC doesn’t come, but the rest of you to be honest, we really don’t care.
SABC is our own but the rest, its ok whether you come or you don’t come. We don’t have a problem.
And if you feel offended in solidarity with this gentleman, like the solidarity of other journalists who connived with a corrupt journalist which was exposed by the Youth League, you are again free to walk. The corridors are open.
Let’s not push each other to a point where we will have to engage each other differently because we are not going to be undermined by young boys and then we say ‘no, we need to restrain ourselves’.
When we are in the BBC studios you can pull us around and say whatever. You do that anyway when we have interviews with you. You just come in when we try to respond and you ask further questions … we never fight with you at that level, that’s your space. But here, my brother, you need to ask the South Africans – if you’re not – what the ANC is and what does the head quarters of the ANC mean to them.
So these are the headquarters of the ANC and we behave accordingly and like I said, if you fell offended, you can walk. There is no problem. And this is not a threat to media freedom. Media freedom without limitations and journalists just running amok and wanting to undermine us like that – we are human beings.
We are not going to be looted here and harassed by journalists. You can do that to the elders and not to us. We are the youth and we will act in a youthful manner, if you know what it means.
So that is how we will act on anybody that seeks to undermine us. The ANC is going to revive liberation movements all over Africa.”
Phew!
Malema’s hypocrisy, arrogance, ignorance, lies and short fuse are, to many Zimbabweans a mirror image of Robert Mugabe, Professor Jonathan Moyo, Joseph Chinotimba and the late Dr. Chenjerai Hunzvi packaged in one person.
Any ANC cadre or leader who tells the world that “when the ANC was underground in exile, we had our internal underground forces fighting for freedom, and we have never spoken from exile,” is either ignorant of how the ANC freed South Africa from Apartheid rule or is simply being mischievous.
Equally for Malema to openly declare that the MDC is a party without grounding in Zimbabwe when the same party controls parliament and its leader defeated the Zanu PF Presidential candidate and Malema’s political idol in the March 2008 elections is nothing short of outright idiocy on the part of the declarent.
Malema’s rant that at the ANC Headquarters nobody must laugh or oppose him epitomizes the dysfunctional arrogance that underpinned and still underpins all African liberation movements when they ascended to power and embarked on destructive policies that left their countries in economic doldrums.
The first football world cup competition on the African continent was awarded to South Africa in recognition of the giant stride the country had taken in creating a multiracial, democratic and press friendly society from a past of destructive racial antagonism Malema is doing his best to revive at a very inappropriate moment in the country’s history.
The feeble attempt by the ANC main league to distance itself from Malema’s racially motivated rant is not adequate to pacify the global village the ANCYL loose cannon chairmen has offended and measures will be taken against the Party and country to stem out recurrence if the South African ruling party does not take measures commensurate with Malema’s offence.
On a more serious note the ANC must seriously review its mission if it intends avoiding the slide of the nation into economic abyss by pursuing Liberation politics in a liberated country where the need is for the party to focus on development politics aimed at improving quality of life of the impoverished African citizens.
As for Malema all we can tell him is that he is free to hold whatever opinions he holds about political parties in Zimbabwe but he must never fool himself into believing that his beliefs or views are sacrosanct lest he will pop out like popcorn when his hypocrisy is exposed.
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