Firebrand's antics go a step too far

Nelson Mandela, on trial in apartheid South Africa in 1964, told the Pretoria supreme court: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities."

In the land that gave birth to Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, there is today a different mantra echoing through public discourse: "Go out. Go out. Bastard! Go out. You bloody agent!"

These are the words of Julius Malema, president of the African National Congress (ANC) youth league, founded with Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo in 1944.

Malema's target was a British journalist, Jonah Fisher, who dared to interrupt him at a press conference this month. "Don't come here with that white tendency," the youth leader barked.

But in his stark break from Mandela's vision of a non-racial society, Malema evidently did not realise he was taking on the world's biggest news-gathering organisation.

When this reporter asked why he had just expelled a BBC reporter, the youth league's spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, said: "So the guy who left is from the BBC?"

But Malema was unrepentant. "You don't howl here. Especially when we speak ... It's not America. It's Africa. You must behave in an African way."

After months of outrageous antics and inflammatory remarks that went unchecked, Malema, 29, was yet again testing how far he could push the country's President, Jacob Zuma. But this time there came an emphatic answer.

Malema will this week face an ANC disciplinary hearing and be asked to explain why he embarrassed the party with his outburst in front of the cameras.

He will reportedly be charged with bringing the party and Government into disrepute after lavishing praise on President Robert Mugabe during a visit to Zimbabwe while rubbishing the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, playing havoc with a delicate mediation in which Zuma is engaged.

He will also be carpeted over his defiance of a high court order to stop singing an apartheid era protest song containing the words "shoot the Boer" and blamed by some for the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche.

Describing the conduct of Malema and the youth league as "alien to the ANC", Zuma said his defiance of the high court ban on the phrase "shoot the Boer" amounted to "undermining the leadership of the ANC and that cannot be accepted".

Sources say Zuma impressed on Malema he was risking South Africa's reputation before June's football World Cup.

Malema admitted he was shocked by the very public repudiation. He had reason to believe he was untouchable because of his past support for Zuma and some very influential figures in the party.

Indeed, when Zuma once hailed him as a leader worthy of "inheriting the ANC", Malema may have taken him at his word, though opposition politicians said this was as ludicrous as describing leading Nazi Joseph Goebbels as a romantic poet.

So who is Julius Malema? How did he come to be so seemingly influential?

And could he really follow Mandela from youth league maverick to president of the republic? The comparison that haunts the dinner parties of suburban South Africa is not with Mandela, but with Mugabe.

On his recent trip, Malema promised Mugabe South Africa would emulate his policy of land seizures, blamed by many for destroying Zimbabwe's economy.

This fiery rhetoric of black empowerment and anti-colonialism plays well in South Africa's poor townships, where people feel cheated by the promise of democracy.

He was born an only child in Seshego, a township near Polokwane in the country's far north, in 1981, and raised by a single mother, a domestic worker forced by illness to leave her job and stay at home.

Malema entered politics at 9 and was soon a marshal at ANC rallies, wearing the party badge on his school uniform.

In 2001, he was elected president of the Congress of South African Students.

He became leader of the ANC youth league in April 2008 after highly controversial elections and soon raised eyebrows with bellicose utterances such as: "We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma."

It was the start of a litany of pronouncements that built his reputation as a dangerous demagogue, leaving audiences, journalists and wise heads in the ANC gasping: "Did he really just say that?"

It is said Malema personifies the cancer of profiteering and self-interest eating into South Africa's body politic.

His rumoured multi-million fortune and opulent lifestyle is a sensitive subject for a populist who claims to give a voice to the voiceless. The BBC reporter who interrupted him to such explosive effect was pointing out Malema lives in Sandton, often described as Africa's wealthiest suburb.

This week's ANC hearing will be watched intently by many South Africans who regard him as an agent of chaos who could shatter Mandela's carefully constructed rainbow nation.

THE MALEMA LOWDOWN

Born: Julius Sello Malema, in Seshego township near Polokwane in Limpopo province, South Africa, March 3, 1981.

Best of times: Jacob Zuma, who partly owed his election as President to Malema, reportedly praised him last October as a "leader in the making" and worthy of "inheriting the ANC" in front of his home crowd in Seshego.

Worst of times: Zuma turned on him last weekend, describing Malema's recent behaviour as "unacceptable", "totally out of order", "against ANC culture" and warranting "consequences". The youth leader admitted he was shocked.

He says: "The struggle is not over. The struggle is starting now. The struggle of fighting for the economic emancipation of our people. The struggle to decolonise the economy of South Africa. The struggle to take the commanding heights of the economy in the hands of white males into the hands of the people of South Africa."

They say: "There was a guy who lived in a country in Europe back in the 1920s and 1930s and into the 1940s. That particular person was allowed to rise because people didn't take him seriously. By reporting on Julius's demagoguery and actually having it out there, people judge him."

- Mondli Makhanya, editor-in-chief, Avusa Media newspapers, South Africa.

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