Malignant Malema

HE USED to be dismissed as an ignorant buffoon, whose populist ranting and colourful racist tirades usefully filled newspaper column inches on a dull day. But now, following Julius Malema's triumphant re-election unopposed as leader of the powerful Youth League of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), South Africans are beginning to wonder whether they have not spawned a “dictator-in-waiting”, as Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, has dubbed him.

Despite his famed “G”—a dismally low grade—for his woodwork exam in his school-leaving matriculation, Mr Malema is no fool. He has proved himself a master at politics and at tapping into the anger of his young black audiences. More than half of black youths under 25 are officially unemployed; the real figure is much higher. Two-thirds leave school without any qualifications. Most live in poor black townships or shanty towns, ineligible for state welfare. Seventeen years after the ANC came to power promising a better life for all, many can look forward only to a career of crime and drugs or to early death through AIDS.

How good, then, to be told by Mr Malema that they are in no way to blame for their plight. Scapegoats are at hand: the new greedy black elite with their hands in the public till, lazy self-seeking politicians, but most of all selfish whites—the 9% of the population who, thanks to the imperialist racist exploitation of blacks over the past 350 years, still have most of the country's land, wealth and top jobs. Despite his faulty English, the paunchy, shaven-headed 30-year-old is a brilliant orator. He cracks outrageous jokes, breaks taboos, sings the old struggle songs (including the one about “kill the Boer”), and tells his audiences what they want to hear. And they lap it up.

Whites, he tells them, have “stolen” from the blacks and must give it all back—without compensation. “Why should I pay for what I own?” White farms must be seized, Zimbabwe-style, mines and banks nationalised. It is no longer a question of whether but how this will happen, he says, despite the ANC's repeated if unconvincing assurances that this is “not government policy”.

Young JuJu, as he is familiarly known, has the wind in his sails. His ego is huge. He is tough, clever and has a disarming cheeky grin. Among his heroes, he counts Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. President Jacob Zuma might once have been included in his list but is now the unnamed butt of much of Mr Malema's stinging criticism about a lack of leadership. Many believe he is now preparing to topple the very man he helped make king. They may be forgetting that the wily Mr Zuma can be ruthless too.