Earlier in the week I saw a video clip of Julius Malema in a Orlando Pirates tracksuit top and I wondered whether he had given the mine owners a break and decided to start his nationalisation efforts in much more lucrative quarters: the football clubs. Sorry mine bosses, he was not.
He had called a press conference to tell the media that he does not like it that they keep on reporting on his private matters. The issue at hand: Malema’s building of a R16 million mansion in Sandton – underground bunker in the tradition of all dictators and wannabe dictators included.
At the press conference he was vintage Malema: I am not building a R16 million house-but even if I was (which of course he is) it is none of your business, and I just called you her today to tell you it is none of your business.
On Saturday he rushed to the High Court to try to stop the City Press from publishing information that might explain where he get the money from that he has been liberally spending as a very clever and highly strategic offensive to infiltrate the bloody capitalists and destroy them from the inside. Thus, sipping the most expensive whiskeys, wearing R250 000 Breitlings and driving a R1,2 million Range Rover, he will strike the decisive and final blow against capital and ensure the economic liberation of the poor.
Of course the City Press articles of Sunday paints a stark picture of a predator elite at his most rampant. It is alleged that Malema has been making enormous amounts of money by simple extortion – pretty much in the style of the Mafia. What is interesting is that he did not use the forum that he ran to in an effort to gag City Press, the High Court, to deny that he is receiving moneys into the Ratanang Family Trust (of which Malema is the sole trustee), instead he tries to present an innocent picture.
I am sure that over the next days and weeks we will hear a lot about this Ratanang Family trust.
Of course we will have the usual choirs pro and against Malema being trundled out and they will sing their songs for and against. That is to be expected.
What depresses me is that this entire saga has very clearly shown how deep we have sunk as a nation in general and the African National Congress in particular in a few short years after the dawn of hope in 1994.
The fact that a person like Malema can today be the authentic voice of the ANC and the poor of this country must mean that we have failed to give concrete expression to the hopes and ideals that nurtured us, sustained us, drove us, motivated us during the dark days of Apartheid.
It means we have failed the poor and dispossessed of the Apartheid days even as we move forward to the 20th year celebration of this our New South Africa.
The fact that it is Julius Malema with all his ostentatious display of wealth who is portrayed as the hero of the poor, while there are millions of children of millions of unemployed mothers and fathers shivering in the cold and going to bed with perhaps only a cup of warm water, is quite frankly unforgivable.
I ask myself, why is it that in 2011 a person like Malema can become a role model for millions of young people who sees no contradiction whatsoever between his propaganda and his own standard of living. According to his analysis the poor and dispossessed actually worships him more because he leads such a lavish lifestyle. For the poor R50 000 a month is such a huge amount that they will readily believe that Malema has been able to buy all of his properties from his salary and can easily afford a R16 million house in Sandton.
Malema may therefore very well be perfectly correct when he says that how he makes his money is his personal and private affair, but any right thinking person will know that it is impossible for him to have all this on a salary of R50 000 and occasional handouts.
It is when we start contemplating the true sources of his wealth that he becomes the ugly and public face of our hopes squashed in a most permanent manner.
Chris' Rock 