The Profit & Loss Statement of Black Politics at Malema’s suspension

By Gauta Komane

I choose the metaphor of a financial statement to underline the fact that, a proper analysis of the leadership of suspended ANC Youth League president, Julius Malema, must of necessity conclude that this militant young man has been a good or bad expenditure for the ruling party and politics in general. To use balance sheet terminology, has he become an asset or a liability for the ANC? Of

course the top brass of the ANC, that is, those in the party leadership whose careers he’s threatening, have determined that he is a liability and therefore needs to be expelled from the party.Assuming that Malema has arrived at the end of his political career within the party, we need to discuss his contribution to the leadership process, and to politics,  and then make a determination as to whether the party is well or worse off for all that. Without doubt, Malema has had a profound impact on the organizational, intellectual, ideological and spiritual content of the ANC and Black politics in general.

Malema grew up during the ten-year period from 1994, the year the ANC took power. This is the period when SA was opening up to globalization and the influence of foreign capital, trade and cultural influence. These phenomena had a profound influence on political, socio-cultural and economic relations not only inter-racially, but also within the Black community itself.

As every South African institution had to embrace and undergo change, in one aspect or another, the ANC too had its own transformation. The responsibility of governance brought with it unprecedented privileges, including the power to hire and fire, to reward and punish, and to impose and spend taxes, among other things.  It is not necessary to argue whether it was under the presidency of Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki,  that the ANC declined organizationally, intellectually and spiritually – because under Mandela, Mbeki was the real administrator.

"When Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela donned the Springbok jersey on that great day in 1995, over 45,000 of his hitherto opponents cried tears of joy. At a stroke Mandela had reconciled a whole nation. For just a moment the nation felt united for the first time in its bloody history; its heart beating as one. That moment did not last".      Judge (Ret) Chris N Greenland.

Put under tremendous pressure by the combined weight of international arms dealers, contractors in engineering and public works, pharmaceutical suppliers, consultants, bankers, policy lobby groups and soccer administrators, among others, the ruling party silently abandoned its socialist promises and, in a loud voice, embraced capitalism and its ugliest manifestations, including the creation of a rapacious, selfish comprador class in the Black community, which was and is still dependent on fiscal transfers from the government’s various institutions and the abovementioned business sectors for its existence.

In just ten years, the ANC changed from a liberation movement into a corrupt ruling party. As the governing class was ill equipped to improve industrial output, and employment creation, membership of the party for many Blacks was viewed as the surest path towards managerial jobs in government-controlled sectors, while to be a leader in the ruling party became the most potent power in the country.

Julius Malema was practically born into this paradigm. He learned it from the most ruthless mentors. He became adept at it because he learned well.

Many ANC’s leaders, at local level, began to concentrate their influence on the awarding of government tenders, and the employment of close friends. Young Malema, bright, daring and reckless, was identified and recruited from the ranks of the high school pupils’ organization, COSAS, into the lobby groups led by ANC and ANC Youth League leaders.

Since joining president Zuma’s faction in 2007, as one of the chief campaigners, he developed his own persona apart from Zuma and the party itself. He was able to identify a vacuum in the policy direction and mass communication in the party machinery and move into that space quickly and strategically.  With party branches in disarray and serving campaigns of individuals, the general membership was no longer the conduit in the government’s interaction with the poor and the working class.

Malema styled himself the voice of the voiceless, the champion of their interests, the defender of Black people against the selfishness and corruption of Whites and the restorer of their historical claim to all the land in SA. He positioned the youth league as the champion of social justice and categorized Zuma, COSATU and the communist party as weak and pliable instruments of White “monopoly

capital”. Making White people the target of blame for all the problems of the poor, he sought to label DA leader, Helen Zille, as the Enemy-in-chief and architect of White privilege and Black deprivation.  Any and every black member of that party is her puppet and contemptible.

He generated a notion among sections of the youth that the economic struggle has nothing to do with class (the traditional position of the ANC) and economic structure, but everything to do with Whites, who are rich, selfish and unwilling to share with Blacks. He cast himself as the Great Thinker; The Supreme Commander of the struggle for Economic Emancipation.

What is the ANC net worth at this moment, as we metaphorically put a monetary value to his contribution? 

1. I daresay the cost of the Malema era has been too high for what it is worth. 
2. He is a liability, perhaps more so than each of the sorry bunch who pass themselves off as the Top Six. 
3. The party is weaker, confused, obsessed with race, corrupt and impervious to criticism. 
4. There is a clear signal that the party is regretting the constitutional checks and balances that limit its ability to run amok. bereft of (nearly) all leadership capacity to turn the party from its ruinous obsession with corrupted wealth accumulation.