Bad Juju

The Mandela years are well and truly over. Now, sharp-suited Mugabe fan Julius Malema has the people’s ear

It is spring here in Johannesburg, and in the spring, one’s thoughts turn to throttling Jonny Steinberg, a newspaper columnist who would have us believe that Julius Malema is about to be expelled from the ruling African National Congress for daring to speak ‘the truth’. Malema is the ANC youth leader presently fighting for his political life at an intra-party disciplinary hearing, and Steinberg is a normally rational fellow who seems to have lost his bearings while trying to pin down a fairly tricky idea. It is true, for instance, that South Africa is full of poor and hungry black people who might believe Malema when he promises to solve their woes by seizing land and other assets from the white enemy. But this is not ‘the truth’. Over the last 50 years, dozens of African leaders have set out to do exactly what Malema envisions, and the outcome has always been misery, backwardness and starvation.

It is hard to fault Malema for failing to mention such things in his rabble-rousing speeches. He is a poorly educated young man and might, for all I know, actually believe his own propaganda. He certainly professes faith in the doctrines of Marx and Lenin, and has lately taken to wearing a rakish beret in the style of Che Guevara. ‘Cuban revolutionaries should be saluted,’ he declared the other day. ‘Because of their ideological clarity and willingness to fight, millions were liberated from colonial subjugation.’

His followers love this stuff, but then they too are poorly educated and unlikely to know that the average monthly wage in Cuba is $20 — about what an illiterate Johannesburg gardener earns in a single day. If truths such as this could be more widely disseminated, Malema would be laughed at.