Why Malema matters

By Andy Carolin

I don’t like Julius Malema. Or, more correctly, perhaps, I do not like the Malema to which the mass media has introduced me. But that is really beside the point. The ANCYL, under his current stewardship, is undoubtedly one of the most militant political forces in recent South African politics. It is this militancy that has allowed the organisation’s leader to key into middle-class white hysteria and attain one of the two designations to which outspoken black leaders are ritualistically assigned: Malema is either cast as court jester or arch villain.

It is not surprising that Malema’s outspokenness on the racially-aligned inequalities of the economy has upset the very people that enjoy economic privilege. More than two decades have passed since the ANC entered into negotiations with the apartheid government, negotiations characterised by compromises, concessions and an ideological shift to the centre. While these negotiations may have been necessary, they nonetheless set the tone for the subsequent national debate. While there has been an undeniable growth in the black middle class and financial elite, two decades on and the structural foundations of the hierarchies of economic privilege remain insufficiently changed.

Though concerns over the slow pace of transformation make periodic appearances in partisan discussion papers, electioneering or official speeches, it is Malema and the ANCYL that is forcing these issues onto the national agenda with sufficient extremity to make South Africans take notice. I recognise that his calls for the nationalisation of mines and the uncompensated expropriation of land are probably void of meaningful policy considerations and lack reflection on the long-term economic and political consequences.

Logic will most likely prevail and land will most likely not be expropriated in the way that he is envisioning. However, the militancy of his rhetoric should force people to ask serious questions about the pace of land reform and existing economic disparities. The significance, then, does not lie in the details of Malema’s plans but rather in its leftist militancy. It is this that will no doubt force the ANC alliance partners to re-evaluate their apparent roles as political representatives of the poor and working class. Malema appears to be singlehandedly radicalising discussions around economic change in the country. He is rescuing the national debate from its stagnancy on the centre and centre-right position that has dominated much of the post-apartheid developmental agenda.

While the history books tell a story of a miraculous and peaceful move from apartheid to democracy, they do not give the human costs of the negotiated transition. The history books do not say that we, white South Africans – and indeed I am as such a beneficiary of privilege – have continued to control large parts of the country and its economy. We are not reminded that it is the schools in the formerly white, middle-class suburbs that have electricity, books, water, and walls. No one wants us to think about the fact that the country’s geographic demography continues to reflect the disadvantage of black South Africans. The history books wouldn’t mention that almost two decades into democracy and freedom, it is still black men and women that travel to the cities and suburbs to clean our toilets, floors and do our washing for seemingly exploitative wages. The history books do not say that millions of South Africans continue to live in the material conditions inherited from apartheid.

It is almost blasphemous to suggest that it was Nelson Mandela’s negotiated settlement that facilitated this and the perpetuation of white economic privilege. Failing to see the irony, many white South Africans express an entitlement ethic in which we think that we are inherently entitled to reconciliation – reconciliation that we enjoy from middle-class suburbia accompanied by private healthcare, security systems and annual holidays to the coast. The history books do not tell us how apartheid continues, every day, in the lives of millions of South Africans.

We need Malema’s sometimes irrational politicking to force these issues into the national debate because if he doesn’t, who will?

Andy Carolin is completing his master’s degree in the faculty of humanities at the University of Johannesburg.