South Africa: needing another hero
African National Congress (ANC) Youth League president Julius Malema has been suspended from the party for five years. The youth leader, perennially in the headlines, is still a topic of discussion despite losing his official position. The commentariat is energised as they continue to discuss his downfall and what it means for the ANC and the country. While the suspension is a decisive act by the president, it is not the last he and his party will have to make – and the Malema issue may even turn out to outlast its protagonist’s career as well.
According to a widely reported idea, Jacob Zuma may have acted just in time to save himself from being challenged by Malema at the ANC’s upcoming meeting and hundredth birthday at Mangaung, due to take place in January. While this is a matter of debate, as in the ANC’s hierarchical arrangement Malema would not technically have had the authority to do so, given Malema’s outspoken reputation such a performance would not have come as a surprise. As things stand, the ANC, and Zuma by his actions, have been praised for removing a bugbear to many, including the party itself. Whites were put off by Malema’s purported exploitation of racial tensions, business and markets by his calls for nationalisation, and the international community and South Africa’s allies for his lambasting of their journalists (the BBC’s Jonah Fisher) and denigrating of their allies (Botswana). With political anger rising, and tangible economic problems such as a downgrading of the country’s credit rating over fears of instability in its key industries, the presidency has acted prudently if a little late in dealing categorically with Malema’s ill-discipline.
However, Zuma may still find himself chewing bitterly on his own earlier words. In 2009, the South African president praised Malema as a potential ‘future leader’ of the ANC and the country. While it remains to be seen whether Malema can stage a comeback, there is a lot of foresight in media reports that the rise of Malema is a symptom reflecting deeper realities in South African politics. South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world, a statement for which countless statistics can be found on the internet and elsewhere – to cite one example, its Gini coefficient of around 65 places the country is in the top five most unequal societies in the world – sadly, along with its close neighbours Botswana (63) and Namibia (70). For all its historically real and currently apparent sympathy with the poor, the ANC has not been able to narrow this gap since coming to power. Simply put, Malema managed to tap into the frustrations of the poor and give them something to believe in. That he was undone by his own confused mix of personal wealth, corruption, and miscalculated offence does not make the problem go away.
South Africa’s current leading politicians have a history of struggle behind them, and see themselves as the guardians of the liberation struggle in the country’s young democracy. Yet, these selfsame politicians have been decried for creating a corrupt system criticised for its cronyism, in a political alliance which, combining communists, black nationalists and free market thinkers, amongst others, has tried to be all things to all people – as long as they pledged their support to the ANC – and yet has not managed to liberate the approximately 50% of the population living in poverty. That this poverty affects black South Africans to a disproportional extent, and is to a large extent still affected by the system of Apartheid, is certainly true – but as a repeated statement of fact this holds little comfort for the starving.
What is striking about this system is that it seems to have become all-consuming – the same old politicians struggle for power at the top, with alliances shifting and backs scratched one day only to be stabbed the next. Young leaders such as Malema find themselves part of this monolithic ANC system, and all too often become tainted by the kind of corruption facilitated by power. Given the on-going power and leadership struggles, distorting the channels of communication for those citizens looking to the party for leadership, those who have a message for the disaffected which strikes a chord will find themselves listened to. In the most recent incarnation, this has meant embracing a populism which is dangerous not only for its content, but for its hollowness.
For Malema is not the first to reach out to the poor of the country by preaching populism. His own mentor President Zuma, now trying to clean his hands of the whole affair, came to power in 2009 to a large extent by reaching out to the poor, and claiming that he would fight poverty and inequality. Malema took up the poisoned chalice, and took the populism to the next step by calling for nationalisation and decrying imperialism. Zuma was either subsumed into the economic realities of the country and the markets, or cynically and not without guile accepted the fruits of the votes of the poor, but left behind the populism for pragmatism. Malema ostensibly stayed on message, at the same time exposing the dualities in the ANC not only to many South Africans to whom it was obvious that the country’s leadership was made up of strange bedfellows, but arguably even to many across the world who now see that the long-ruling party and indeed the country itself is riven by disagreement.
It has been said that one of the goals of politics is to ‘give voice to the voiceless’. Leaders and ex-leaders in the country’s leadership structure have capitalised on this fact, but the voiceless are still there, passed over in silence for now while ‘business as usual’ continues. Malema’s voice may have lacked the critical wisdom needed to guide the country, but until all South Africans are able to lift themselves up and experience equality, they will be listening for signs of hope. At a time when the country feels let down by its leaders, people may just feel that they need another hero.
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