This week I am concentrating on the content of several encounters Julius Malema had on the university circuits of Oxford, Cambridge and others not too long ago.
I am playing catch-up because I think my reaction to, and observations of, Malema’s visit to the land of the colonisers, who were leaders in his dehumanisation, bear closer examination.
Malema presented himself to his erstwhile “masters” wearing his red beret, much the same, I suppose as Garibaldi would tout his brown shirts in his day. He unashamedly acknowledges the irritation factor this gesture evokes from his distractors.
He explains that he doesn’t accept white superiority as a given. He underlines the widening gap between those who have and those who don’t have.
He attacks in full frontal mode the misconception skin colour has anything to do with intelligence, integrity or morality. In his questioning of this flawed assumption, his methodology quickly devolves into a demand for serious attempts to alter the unequal distribution of wealth.
In other words, his chagrin at the assumptions on ethnic grounds becomes an ideology of dismantling the capitalist system.
At this stage I would ask the question: does the redistribution of wealth really make amends for the dehumanisation of darker-skinned people?
What would be the price-tag that provides recompense for my own life of 82 years as a “coloured” person? It is an electric question, filled with potential sparks that can ignite inflammatory debates and cause civil disruption.
It has to expose and underline the uncomfortable truth that the position of material advantage was driven by an imperative of rapacious imperialism that knew no bounds.
The acquisition of material wealth at the cost of national identities and cultures were legitimised by shows of strength and a total disregard for the human factor.
It is no great leap to the present day where we have a show of strength that openly defies the white model. Zuma has defied the ConCourt on a matter that had no business in those hallowed halls.
In a word, both Zuma and Malema, supposedly at diametric opposite ends, according to popular belief, will spearhead the most concentrated thrust towards unbundling and dismantling the white model that crouches with toad-like tenacity on the enshrined Constitution of our beloved country.
The clips I accessed showed Malema asking for open cheque-books that would facilitate equity on his terms. Zuma refuses to be tried by a court that is based on the judicial system of his erstwhile masters.
And how do these two stances connect or overlap? They demonstrate in clear terms the growing awareness that the ANC has betrayed the people of South Africa.
Malema stops short of calling Madiba a sell-out, while Zuma rallies cohorts of askaris and the province of KwaZulu-Natal as contenders for replacing the crumbling ANC. Ramaphosa perpetuates the flawed ethic that the party comes first, and the country second.
This, coupled with Malema’s open wooing of British capital for a refurbished RSA, plus Zuma’s belligerent disregard for the rule of law finally congeal into my fears for this country.
This is an election year. ANC support, both inside and outside the party, is waning. Zuma has a more visible anti-ANC support structure and Malema has altered his strategy to that of statesman out to conscientise the empire into paying back the land and resources stolen in the name of the British Empire.
So when we go the polls in October, assuming the ANC, strengthened by Angie’s one day as acting president, shoves Covid aside, we must ask the questions that Zuma and Malema are asking separately but in an unholy potential union of confrontation of the present status quo.
Let us read Zuma’s open threats and Malema’s veiled suggestion that it hasn’t gone to civil war yet!
Then, vote with your head, and not your heart.
* Literally Yours is a weekly column from Cape Argus reader Alex Tabisher. He can be contacted on email by [email protected]
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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