Malema swaggers to the gaming table in the Last Chance Saloon

Expelled African National Congress Youth League leader, Julius Malema, may know how to whip up a paramilitary posse of slathering, beret-wearing fascists, but when it comes to taking strategic decisions he just hasn’t a clue.

When the chips are down he behaves like an alcohol befuddled gambler in the Last Chance Saloon, rashly doubling and redoubling the stakes. Instead of counting the cards, he counts on Lady Luck to come to his rescue.

Neither he, nor his lawyers for that matter, seems to understand the purpose of mitigatory pleadings. Mitigation proceeds from the accused’s tacit acknowledgement — at least at that particular point in the proceedings — of guilt, as pronounced by the court.

This is the “Yes, but … ” moment. The defendant pretends to accept the verdict with as good a grace as he can publicly muster, while in the background lining up grounds for a future appeal against conviction, and in the meantime tries to soften the sentence by leading evidence as to what a warm and wonderful fellow he is, except for this split second of madness when the Devil made him do it.

Eyes welling with contrition, he pledges never to be bad again, to embrace the Lord and — if treated mercifully by the court — to spend the rest of his days in the humble service of widows and orphans. It is entirely pointless and self-destructive to keep insisting that he is not guilty but was framed, that the victim in any case had it coming, that the judges and the prosecution are corrupt, and that if afforded the opportunity, he intends to burn the courthouse down.

Yet this, in essence, is exactly what Malema has insisted on doing before the ANC’s National Disciplinary Court (NDC). It is a pattern of extraordinary arrogance that has, and will continue, to cost him dear.

Let’s kick off with Malema’s history of defiance. In 2010 Malema was found guilty of ill-discipline and because he appeared contrite, was given a two-year suspension, held in abeyance on condition that he submitted to certain “corrective” procedures — including anger management classes — and did not contravene the ANC disciplinary code again.

Not only has Malema again transgressed, but also it transpires that he never submitted himself to the corrective procedures. This is the defiance of someone who is either very confident of being royal game, or very foolish. It is also a commentary on how poor the ANC’s monitoring of its own structures’ decisions is.

At this latest NDC hearing, ordered by the ANC Appeals Committee to consider mitigatory as well as possible aggravating factors after it had dismissed the ANCYL cohort’s appeal, Malema and his two co-accused failed to offer any mitigatory evidence but instead continued to deny guilt and offer justifications for their actions. The NDC, correctly, viewed this as an aggravating factor.

There was “no remorse or acceptance of wrong doing”, the NDC writes in its public announcement of findings. Instead Malema especially continued to challenge the legality of the proceedings and to dispute the ANC’s right to discipline ANCYL members.

Malema was “unrepentant” and had shown through his dismissive attitude to the Appeal Committee that “the likelihood of him respecting the ANC’s constitution is remote”. The NDC understandably took particular umbrage at Malema’s threat at the conclusion of the proceedings that the “real battle” was yet to come.

Since then Malema has reiterated these sentiments. He told the SABC that “the road ahead of us is going to be very long and needs men and women … who are very strong. If you are weak, you are going to fall in the process. I will die with my boots on, I will die for what I believe in.”

Since there are only two options left for Malema — that either the ANC national executive committee or the delegates to the Mangaung elective conference overturn his expulsion — this is high stakes stuff. It’s the political equivalent of gambling your life on red and hoping for a lucky spin of the wheel.

On the other hand, having failed tactically, Malema has no option but to go for broke. And after all, if he wins he will wield even more influence within the ANC than before, as well as renewing the lucrative tenderpreneurial line that that party membership has afforded him. That has netted him an estimated R54-million in just a few years.