Juju's globetrotting -- for what?

By Suntosh Pillay

Truth is always stranger than fiction. Malema, after all, went to Zimbabwe to learn economics from Robert Mugabe. In fact, the ANC Youth League’s “study-tour programme”, where eight of Malema’s cronies will travel to China, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba, to “learn” how these countries have fared in nationalisation projects, is absurd. This decision may stem from Malema’s delusions of grandeur that the ANC will end poverty if it nationalises our mines.

Three things are confusing me.

Firstly, has the ANCYL never heard of libraries, the internet or academic databases? One need not travel all around the world in order to learn about something. There is ample research that documents the nationalisation of economic assets. Most of Zimbabwe’s nationalised mines are no longer operational. Read, Malema; it will cost less.

Secondly, how can any sensible person hope to learn anything about economic prosperity from talking to a corrupt, power-drunk president who nonchalantly lives in luxury while ruling a failed state? What good can come of a senile dictator explaining complex economics to a juvenile delinquent? Why afford Mugabe any intellectual legitimacy on being an advisor to our future?
The Movement for Democratic Change is not happy. Its publicity secretary, Sibangeni Dube, said “we are worried that a highly regarded (political) party in Africa like the ANC would openly share notes with Zanu-PF whose violation of human rights in Zimbabwe are well documented”. Indeed, we should all be worried. Has little Julius signed up for Dictators-Camp to spend his holiday? Will he return with a signed copy of “The Idiot’s Guide to Megalomania and Economic Ruin”? This would be funny if it were not so frightening.

Thirdly, why is Malema ignoring our president’s message? Jacob Zuma has categorically stated in parliament and to UK investors that nationalisation is not on the cards. The ANC and the ANCYL are singing from different hymn sheets. Perhaps Malema cannot read the hymn sheet.

Why does Zuma remain silent? Surely, if the head of your party’s youth movement is giving you the middle finger and wasting resources on a wild goose chase, you would intervene? Zuma asserted Malema’s right to voice his opinion on nationalisation and suggested that we debate with him in the media. But now it’s more than an opinion — he’s on an international tour, giving the impression worldwide that this is South Africa’s plan. I smell confused investors and strained bilateral relations.

Perhaps Zuma is misleading us all. Perhaps nationalisation is being kept under wraps until the World Cup is over, so that visitors don’t read in newspapers about our reckless communist ambitions that have consistently not worked elsewhere in the world. Or perhaps Zuma, like a father at his wits end, is clueless about how to rein in his naughty kid, now that Malema’s got hold of the credit card and Holiday Club magazine.

South African philosopher Bert Olivier recently lamented how our politicians have the nerve to rename streets after Che Guevara “but have drifted from ideals they once supposedly espoused”.

Olivier said it perfectly: “Che’s opposition to capitalism did not blind him to the fact that socialism easily became perverted through the concentration of power in the hands of the few … he emphasised that a socialist economy in itself is not ‘worth the effort, sacrifice, and risks of war and destruction’ if, in the end, it promotes just another variety of individualist ambition for power and greed.”

Guevara called for a new morality, where men and women move beyond empty materialist values and embraced a spirit of genuine care for other human beings.

Malema is a false revolutionary. It’s unfortunate that desperate people see him as a source of hope. A real revolutionary, Guevara once quipped that capitalism is a “contest among wolves”. Malema unashamedly plays the capitalist game like a wolf, while wearing sheep’s clothing in the form of a socialist guise. His communist rhetoric is a joke.

This ridiculous, expensive, and wasteful international holiday he is embarking on is by far the most elaborate display yet of such blasé hypocrisy.

Suntosh Pillay is a clinical psychologist in KZN. He writes independently on social issues. This column first appeared in The Witness.