Is Julius ‘Juju' Malema finished? This is the question plaguing South Africa's political soothsayers. Following the ANC national disciplinary committee's devastating sentencing handed down and the pathetic whimpers of objection from Malema's supporters in reaction, with hindsight his career now suddenly looks less like that of a political heavyweight and more like that of a passing media sensation, a sort of "Jihad Jane" or "Balloon Boy" or the guy in the Big Brother house everyone hated but loved to watch, anticipating the day he would finally be evicted. He will now most likely be buried in criminal investigations.
Malema is highly unlikely to win an appeal. Reading the 38 page verdict, it would take Orwellian doublespeak and some cognitive dissonance to come to any conclusion other than the one the disciplinary committee painstakingly arrived at: that Malema's utterances breached its constitution, sowed division, brought the ANC into disrepute, and are anathema to the traditions of the oldest surviving liberation party in Africa, once lauded by much of the world, but now with a tattered, suspect reputation. He was simply not up to the responsibilities of his position. There are many eagerly waiting to take his place and they were mobilising even before the disciplinary hearings concluded.
One thing is sure, should Malema somehow gain sufficient support on the ANC's NEC to override his suspension and be once more in the ascendant, the massive breakaway of about 1.3 million voters from the ANC seen after the Zuma populists took control in Polokwane, will be as nothing compared to the haemorrhage that would follow a Malema revolution in Manguang, the ANC's next elective conference. It's unlikely, especially now that President Zuma seems to be on a roll, having finally overcome his mental torpor. Heads, even those loyal, are rolling. The party is also well aware that Zuma is a key to consolidating the KwazuluNatal vote, the voting bloc that has become crucial for the party's well-being.
Whatever the critics of the ANC might say, the party, despite everything, still has too many grownups left who will not tolerate a Malema-style leadership. For a long time now the various factions in the ANC have been bound together by little more than money and patronage, but even the most cynical politician can only take so much indignity, stupidity and the whittling away of their integrity and legacy.
Furthermore, the strategists know the political landscape is changing. Party loyalty and identification with the ANC and its liberation history is diminishing inexorably year on year with every generation of "born-frees". Why else spend R100 million shoring up their identity during next year's centenary celebrations? Or in the words of ANC national chairperson comrade Baleka Mbete: "Future and younger generations need to know where we come from".
Dare one hope in the light of these recent events, that some of that expense will be used to reaffirm the core values of the old ANC - non-racism, non-sexism, democratic decision making, sacrifice and service to the people? One fears that it will too easily slip into yet another exercise in bread and circuses, self-aggrandisement, and the air-brushing of history with liberation mythomania.
Corruption and service delivery failures are sorely testing the ANC's traditional power base amongst the poor. Malema's Zanufication project to win populist support is a dead end; the ANC has survived this long by being progressive, forward-looking and smarter than the myopic despots of yesterday's Africa.
The expulsion of Malema certainly makes Zuma look good. But that doesn't mean he is stronger. Zuma's detractors, which Malema hoped would support his coup, remain. Can Zuma still unite his party and tackle the problems of South Africa with the creativity and broad-based consensus (beyond just the ANC) that is required? Malema is the ANC's end product and there are a thousand like him.
I believe the ANC has looked across the borders and seen how Mauritius and Botswana have prospered, while Zimbabwe has killed the geese (and a lot of its own people) that laid the golden eggs. They have seen the bloodied corpse of Gaddafi and know where such politicians will meet their end in future. Yet the constituency Malema and his ilk at least purported to represent is real and growing at an alarming rate. The party had pinned their hopes on Malema to hypnotize that vote. But he cocked it up. This leaves the ANC with a serious election problem.
Meanwhile some Cope supporters may have drifted back to the ANC, but the playing field for a black opposition party has never been more open. Cope broke taboo ground and planted the seed for a significant constituency outside of the current ANC which has been growing ever since. At the same time, Cope has taught the dissenters valuable lessons on how not to go about it. These citizens are simply waiting for a viable alternative (or a restored ANC) to earn their vote.
If anything, political clowns Malema and Shivambu with their unruly, potty mouths, petty snipes, and acrimonious personalised attacks, not to mention stupidity, placed the ANC in peril of emulating Cope. Hence the long running joke that Malema is a DA mole.
But for all his fishing in the shallow end, Malema hasn't managed to rouse the masses, only the rabble - the political entrepreneurs of the party's lower ranks and their zombie army, or in the words of the ANC national disciplinary committee: the "unprecedented violent demonstrations outside Luthuli House causing disruption and chaos in the City of Joburg".
The pathetic turnout for Malema's "economic freedom march" put pay to any myths of his grassroots support. It was a calculated risk the leadership took, even with Machiavellian slyness supporting his effort, but it paid off. In the end Zuma gave Malema enough rope to run the circles needed to shorten his leash, if it didn't finally strangle him.
Brent Meersman is the author of Reports Before Daybreak and Primary Coloured.
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