Isn’t it astounding? That a man who incites people to murder and violence, who uses hate speech and insults senior members of his party is still around and playing a prominent political role in the ruling party?
Indeed, most people can’t seem to fathom what lies behind South Africa's ruling party head Jacob Zuma’s limp excuses for the outrageous, undemocratic and ant-constitutional behaviour employed by his most virulent supporter, ANC Youth League head Julius Malema. Zuma has even been at pains to compare the cretin with Nelson Mandela, who he says was also a “hothead” when he was head of the ANCYL – and was more than keen to take on ANC leadership. The comparison is odious and hugely disrespectful to our former president: Mandela might have been passionate in his youth, but he was a fighter for freedom and hardly advocated the use of violence to further the petty, self-serving aims of factional power plays.
There are, however, two very plausible explanations for Zuma’s implicit support for Malema, both of them chilling.
The one is that Zuma is using Malema as a useful idiot to propagate the new party line. In other words: Malema is happily revealing the ANC’s true colours as a movement intolerant of the views of others and militant in its desire for total control. Certainly Zuma’s anthem Umshini wam ["Bring me my machine gun"] takes on a different, more sinister dimension in the light of the violence and intimidation employed by Zuma supporters at meetings of the new ANC breakaway party, the Congress of the People.
According to Malema’s rhetoric (including his attacks on the DA which he has called on to be “eliminated”), the post-Polokwane ANC condones violence to achieve its aims. It is not a movement based on democracy but, rather, is intent on capturing of control through whatever means are necessary.
The fact that Zuma has wholeheartedly failed to rein Julius Malema appears simply to be confirmation of this.
The second possible explanation is that Jacob Zuma is simply too weak – and owes too much to the Youth League – to shut Malema up. They’ve certainly staked a lot on his ascent to power, and in return for their loyalty, they are indeed expecting a lot (tenders, anyone?). That is frightening because how can someone who is not their own man be able to lead a nation? Whenever a decision is made, one would always be left wondering what the exact ulterior motive is behind it.
But while Zuma has indeed prostituted himself to many people who are all desperate for a return on their “investment”, he has done scarily little to convince South Africans that the first explanation is not the correct one.
Come South Africa's 2009 elections, the new ANC breakaway party -- dubbed Shikota by the South African media -- won't be getting my vote. While their pro-constitutional rhetoric is encouraging, it's also hard to believe.
Where was Lekota's commitment constitution when he was in Mbeki's cabinet? He seemed quite happy to toe the party line when it came to Aids, Zimbabwe and other issues.
It's tempting took think the likes of Lekota have had a change of heart, a damascene conversion to safeguarding and promoting our constitution and democracy. But this is extremely doubtful especially when you have Shilowa saying that the dissidents "revere" Mbeki: an autocrat whose tenure was marked by the supression of debate, demonisation of critics, racialisation, Aids-denialism, lacklustre service delivery, rampant corruption and shocking complicity in maintaining Mugabe's oppressive regime.
Something equally revealing are the figures that are emerging within the movement. Nosimo Balindlela, the erstwhile premier of the Eastern Cape, has been welcomed by the breakaway with open arms. And yet this woman led a provincial administration plagued by corruption, ineptitude and wholesale service delivery failure.
Smuts Ngonyama is another influential member in the new party. But this man hardly represents democratic values – indeed, as Thabo’s spindoctor-in-chief and head of the presidency, he epitomised all that was callously vile and Machiavellian about the Mbeki regime.
The mask has slipped. Whatever they might claim, Shikota is not about principles or reform – such utterances appear merely to be a smokescreen to dupe the electorate into giving them back the power and influence that this cabal of Polokwane losers has lost – and now craves.
Opposition parties need to be on their guard. As South African human rights acitvist Rhoda Kadalie says in her latest column:
It seems a bit far-fetched for opposition parties to support Lekota and Shilowa on the grounds of principle — the sanctity of the constitution and democracy — when they know that cabal allowed the president to flout it at every turn, with regard to the weakening of Parliament, the chapter nine institutions, the National Prosecuting Authority and his support of Jackie Selebi.
I hope I’m proved wrong. But Shikota seems little more than Mbeki 2.0: a reincarnation of the self-interested, craven elite who undermined South Africa’s hard-won democracy and, while earnestly amassing power and fortune for themselves, failed to uplift and empower the masses of people who were oppressed by apartheid.
