In his powerful novel The Master of Petersburg JM Coetzee describes the impenetrable stupidity and denseness of the young leader of the revolutionary movement in the city as being that of Baal. I could unfortunately not find the exact quote on the net. But Baal was the stone god of the Philistines and nothing describes Julius Malema better.
I have been trying to make light of the buffoon Julius, but events over the weekend are forcing me to look at this stone god of the Philistines a bit deeper. If my discourse becomes incoherent forgive me, but that is the power of the man. He addles the minds of his supporters and detractors alike. So let us look at him as far as is humanly possible.
- He does not have the interests of his ignorant followers at heart. Witness to this is his current visit to Zimbabwe where he is openly supporting one of the most deplorable regimes on the African continent, that of one of the last old time despots, Robbert Mugabe. That is despite the fact that South Africa is swamped on a daily basis with refugees from that godforsaken country. The disconnect is complete.
- He preaches nationalisation of everything, including my wallet it would seem (in true African despotic terms) while at the same time enriching himself to the tune of hundreds of millions of Rands with government tenders of which most are under legal and performance scrutiny. The last two bridges one of the companies of which he is a 'director' apparently collapsed shortly after they were built. The disconnect is complete.
- He has a well-publicised penchant for expensive clothing, whisky, cars, houses and such. The disconnect is complete, yet his followers follow.
- For the past month or so this president of the ANC Youth League has been going around singing an old 'struggle' song "Kill the farmer, kill the Boer". He adapted it by replacing "kill" with "shoot". (Note: I can't get rid of the bullet there so just read this as a new paragraph)
He was duly dragged to court about this blatant hate speech which is forbidden by South African law. A High Court interdict against the singing of the song was also duly obtained. So far so bad, but then things got worse.
On Saturday Eugene Terre'blanche, the leader of the white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging (Afrikaner resistance movement) a small and largely irrelevant grouping, was murdered on his farm. The motive for the murder was apparently a dispute with one of his farm labourers over an unpaid wage of R300 (about 30 Euro). The alleged killers were a 21-year-old and a 15-year-old.
Now I have no connection with the buffoon Terre'blanche or his silly organisation. As I said they were a largely irrelevant part of the South African political landscape. A remnant of the 'old South Africa' that would have disappeared by themselves in a couple of years.
However, now Baal and his song and the murder have put them back on the road to recovery. The reason for this is that most white South Africans, especially Afrikaners (Boers), have rural or farming roots. I myself have elderly parents living on a farm and I am often worried about their security.
At the same time there has been a continuing series of very violent attacks on farmers, especially the elderly, ever since the hold on power by whites began slipping. That was in the middle to late 80s and not with the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.
So the 'historic struggle song' as the ANC wants to defend it in their appeal against the ban on the singing of it touched a very raw nerve indeed and the consequences are yet to be seen.
Meanwhile Malema has been singing it at Mugabe's Zanu-PF rallies, saying the court interdict did not apply there. Baal dressed in full Zany-PF regalia.
But to conclude. South Africa has been on the the brink of the abyss many times since the release of Mandela and somehow sanity always prevails just when most people think that everything is lost. Let us live in hope that it would do so again and that Baal would be sidelined by the organisation that keeps him relevant.
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