Adolf und Julius: The funny side of Malema

Humour is just another way of coming to terms with life’s more appalling aspects, especially those over which one is powerless.

To judge by the number of Julius Malema quips that are doing the rounds, middle-class South Africans of all races view him with equal measures of fear and loathing. They also have little confidence that the African National Congress (ANC) leadership will or can do anything about the divisive ANC Youth League leader.

Even the worst rabble-rousers can be funny, at least at first. There were very many Germans who initially mocked Herr Adolf Hitler — here was a former bricklayer, mediocre street painter and object of ridicule among his Great War comrades, who had suddenly developed megalomaniacal ambitions to lead the German nation.

The joke, unfortunately, was on them. It so happened that a time when all other German politicians were bereft of vision, Hitler articulated an enticing — albeit ultimately disastrous — “solution” to the Weimar Republic’s woes.

The jocular view of Malema may well unfold in similar fashion. Malema’s defiantly crass ignorance, his raw prejudices, and the gargling inarticulacy behind his mindless sloganeering, all make him an irresistible target for derision. Yet amidst all the giggling, it is easy to forget that Malema’s buffoonery does not make him any less politically dangerous.

While Malema’s solutions are indeed laughably simplistic (and unconstitutional), he articulates the very real problems of the poor, which the ANC leadership and the middle-class in general have forgotten.

While arguing against nationalisation, Cyril Ramaphosa, business tycoon and ANC national executive member, notes that its sudden popularity is the direct result of corporate leaders who failed to implement the transformation agenda they had agreed to. In Ramaphosa’s view, this has “planted seeds for dissension” among unemployed young people, fuelling “deep frustration” at their lack of stake in the economy.

Of course, Julius is not Adolf and President Jacob Zuma is not the German President Paul von Hindenburg, although tempting analogies could be drawn with Hindenburg’s fatal pliability at the hands of Hitler. But there is a similarity in that South Africa is also slipping into a potentially explosive doldrum, while lacking leaders with an executable alternative vision.

This is not out of a lack of concern among South Africans. There has been a recent deluge of proposals — from business and church leaders, think tanks, non governmental organisations and state entities — on how government could tackle that which currently paralyses it.

A few months back, Minister Trevor Manuel’s National Planning Commission (NPC), drawing on a wide expertise, reported on the parameters of the problem. This week, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan cautiously mooted the need to possibly, maybe, just a tad, relax some of the labour laws, so that government could meet its target of 5-million new jobs by 2020.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu this week lobbied for a “quite piffling” once-off wealth tax on whites, an idea first floated during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings of the mid-90s. It would fund the upliftment of black communities and, said the Arch, would be an “extraordinary symbol” of whites’ desire for reconciliation.

Barney Pityana, theologian and former Black Consciousness activist, this week called for a presidential commission that would draw on the views of “far more stakeholders than are being consulted at present”, to look into unemployment, rampant inequality, education, health services, lack of delivery and corruption. The country, Pityana warned, was “at the tipping point” but could still “pull back from the precipice”.

The response to these proposals has been predictable. The trade unions have blasted the NPC and Gordhan. Tutu’s suggestion was met with howls of white outrage. The ANC left-wing has pre-emptively declared that it will not accept the party’s own investigation into nationalisation, unless it recommended nationalisation.

It’s no joke. The country is in need of exceptional leadership. It is increasingly unlikely that Zuma will deliver it.