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THE WORLD
ACCORDING TO
JULIUS
MALEMA
Written and compiled by
MAX DU PREEZ and MANDY ROSSOUW
KWELA BOOKS
Foreword
In April 2007 few South Africans knew of the existence of a young man called Julius Sello Malema. But by the time the country held general elections in April 2009, his name and face had become as instantly recognisable as that of the new president himself.
By mid-2009 Malema, still only 28 years old, was one of the most blogged-about people in Africa. A Google search listed more than 100 000 English pages. Hardly a day goes by without some newspaper mentioning his name somewhere. He has even featured in a fast-food chain’s advertising campaign, albeit as a puppet.
No previous president of the African National Congress Youth League, not even the controversial Peter Mokaba or the hot-headed Fikile Mbalula, Malema’s immediate predecessor, has generated such strong emotion. Few public personalities have been subjected to as many jokes and as much abuse.
But it is also true that no Youth League president before him could claim to have played such a major role in an ANC election campaign as Malema did in 2009.
It would be generally true to say that Malema is despised and ridiculed by most white South Africans as well as people from other minority groups, even by sections of the urban black elite. His behaviour has often been cited as a reason for members of the black middle class abandoning the ANC and joining the breakaway Congress of the People (Cope).
Yet it is also true that among the black youth Malema has become a much-admired hero and his arrogant, crude defiance a representation of their fears, resentments and aspirations.
Mention Malema’s name in any kind of company and you’re bound to start debates around questions such as: is he simply a buffoon, or is he actually very smart? Is he an unguided missile, or is he doing some puppet master’s bidding? Is the Zuma leadership unhappy with his statements, or does Malema’s often outrageous utterances actually suit them? And: did Malema hurt or help the ANC during their 2009 election campaign?
Another question: is Julius Malema just an interesting individual, or does he represent something bigger in South African society? If he is a symbol, of what?
There are few answers in his office, in the ANC’s headquarters at Luthuli House, Johannesburg. The large desk is shiny and empty. No papers or books or even a computer in sight, although he has said the Youth League supplied him with a laptop. A fancy living room suite with a glass coffee table adorns one corner, but there are no personal memorabilia like photographs to make the office his home away from home. From behind his desk he can look out onto the road where ministers and other dignitaries visiting Luthuli House park their cars. When his cellphone rings, the sound of a revolutionary song fills the room.
Malema’s name was catapulted into the headlines with his shocking public declaration in June 2008: “Let us make it clear now: We are prepared to die for Zuma. Not only that, we are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma.”
But his political career had started much earlier than that.
The early years
Malema was born on 3 March 1981 into a poverty-stricken township called Masakeng Zone 1 in Seshego, Limpopo. His father was absent; he was brought up by his mother, Flora, a domestic worker, and his grandmother, Sarah.
“You will find the poorest people in Masakeng,” Malema says, “and my family was the poorest of the poor.” He likes to refer to his “peasant” background in interviews. He told the Sowetan daily newspaper in April 2009: “Having gone to school without shoes or proper uniform and during lunch times not knowing where you will get your next meal, those are the conditions we grew up under.”
Flora Malema was a devout Christian and not very politically inclined. When the young Julius ran into trouble at school, it was Granny Sarah who rushed to his defence – “my mother was afraid of the authorities”. Julius soon grew much closer to his grandmother, who was, and still is, according to him, a committed ANC activist. In a rare glimpse into his private life, he told Talk Radio 702’s Jenny Crwys-Williams in November 2008: “I became more comfortable with her politically than with my mother.” His mother died in 2005, but Malema has remained very close to his granny – he still phones her every day of his life.
Malema was only nine years old when he ran away from home and sneaked onto a bus carrying ANC members to Johannesburg to see Nelson Mandela, who had just been released from jail after 27 years behind bars. When he returned home the next day, family members say, he was a different boy. In 1993 he ran away again, this time to attend the funeral of MK and SACP struggle icon Chris Hani, who had been assassinated by a right-wing fanatic.
Malema gets vague when asked about his earliest political activities, but stories abound of how he joined the ANC’s Masupatsela (trailblazers) movement at the age of nine and how the local comrades taught him to make petrol bombs and barricades of burning tyres when he was only 12. ANC activists in Seshego confirm that Malema was a “child activist”, trained ANC marshal and that he could toyi-toyi and sing liberation songs long before he went to high school.
He was only 14 when he became leader of the ANC Youth League in his home town. At 16 he was chairman of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) in Limpopo and was elected its national president four years later.
How does one explain Malema’s complete obsession with the ANC and politics in general since even before adolescence? He has repeatedly stated that he is not interested in getting married, because he is “married to the ANC”; he has only ever read political books, all biographies of ANC politicians; he says his “whole being belongs to the ANC”; he says even when he goes to clubs or restaurants to socialise he only talks about politics.
Perhaps growing up without a father – he says he has never known his father and has no need to get to know him – could explain a lot. When Crwys-Williams asked him whether not having a father left a gap in his life, he responded: “Perhaps those conditions made us to understand why there is a need for us to participate in the struggle and fight against the injustice caused by the apartheid regime. When you grow up under people who appreciate you and who are always there to support you, that gap, you don’t feel it. Because in the ANC, the leaders of the ANC have played a father figure role in my life and they still do that even today.”
Malema failed grade 8 and had to repeat grade 9, after, he says, he had been expelled for political activities. He only wrote his matric exams when he was 21. He wasn’t a great student: in 2008 the media got hold of his matric results and revealed that he had just scraped through, failing both mathematics and woodwork. His school friends at Mohlakaneng High maintain that this was more a consequence of his preoccupation with political activities than due to a lack of intelligence or an inability to learn. Observing him across his desk in Luthuli House it doesn’t appear as if a lack of grey matter is one of his shortcomings.
But his weak academic background has probably contributed to his strong anti-intellectual streak. His full-frontal attack on the then Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, for having a “fake American accent” (she has an English accent, actually) and several snide remarks about Thabo Mbeki’s intellectualism, are examples. Malema is also fond of telling interviewers that many senior leaders are the products of “squatter camps and villages rather than universities”, and that university degrees “don’t guarantee wisdom”. He told the Sowetan in an interview that he was very proud of Jacob Zuma “who was not educated at universities in London or America, but was taught by his own people in Nkandla”.
(Sunday Times journalist and author Fred Khumalo once wrote about Malema, whom he called an ihlongandlebe or “contumelious nincompoop”: “On second thoughts, I think I have to thank the gods of academia for denying Malema the stamina for rigorous study. Imagine a highly educated Malema.”)
Malema’s leadership