It seems increasingly apparent that Julius Malema has lost all sense of perspective. He is undoubtedly an angry man, but with little or no inner compass.
Admittedly, there is a lot to be angry about in South Africa: the prospects for most South Africans have barely improved since 1994; and the extent to which many white South Africans still fearfully resist change is extremely frustrating. So anger itself is not a problem. The problem is when it is expressed in such a discriminatory and random fashion.
Mr Malema’s rebel-without-a-cause anger is the mark of a brazen opportunist, knowing that taking a wildly oppositional stand to anything and everything will get him press coverage. Whether it be supporting ZANU PF, racially abusing journalists, supporting painfully irresponsible hip-hop stars, or indulging in hate speech in the name of ANC history, he comes across as a man deeply unaware of the bigger political or moral picture. He is determined to be heard, whatever the cost to our fledgling democracy.
The deeper worry about Mr Malema’s irresponsible rantings is that only at the eleventh hour has the ANC publicly recognized the damage he may be causing. We all know that to overturn apartheid many unsavoury things had to be said and done. But South Africa is trying to move on, the context has changed: crude fighting rhetoric has lost its credibility, while democratic principles such as cultural and racial acceptance are entrenched in a constitution that the ANC has endorsed. Unfortunately, it is struggling to manage the trickiness of democracy: it doesn’t always go your way; democracy has a will of its own. Respect for all social groups is a principle that the ANC rightfully fought for, and therefore its behaviour should be strongly guided by this principle, however uncomfortable that may be at times. Somehow, for a little while the ANC has got lost in the violent paradigm of the past. Whatever the symbolic value of the Kill the Boer song for the ANC, talk of ‘killing’ by public figures can only add currency to the value of violence in an already severely violence-torn society. Whatever your political persuasion, it’s hard to believe that publicly speaking of ‘kill the boer’ could be considered as any less undemocratic and destructive as if someone was to spout ‘kill the African’ or ‘kill the Indian’.
It’s time for less moral ambiguity, for us to recognize that what people do in the present cannot be endlessly justified by the sufferings of apartheid. And Mr Malema might benefit from looking at his own behavior as hard as he looks at others as he wags his finger at all the perceived ‘enemies of the cause’. Reflection and humility are marks of a mature man. If he wishes to be taken seriously by anyone other than those who hold onto his political coat-tails, he would also do well to stop exposing his insecurity by constantly resorting to abuse and aggression as his sole way of coping with others’ requests for him to be accountable.
L’enfant terrible: anger without a compass
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