Julius Malema aka JuJu
President
ANC Youth League (ANCYL)
There’s a batshit crazy young post-apartheid black politician on the loose in South Africa. His name is Julius Malema. At thirty years of age, he is the president of the ruling ANC party Youth League (ANCYL). His mischiefs—mostly, words verging on hate speech sputtered at the minority white South-African citizens—are so numerous people have all but given up counting them—or trying to correct the falsehoods they contain.
Malema seems afflicted with bad temper disorder in his dealings with white people. BBC journalist Jonah Fisher had a firsthand experience of Malema’s mercurial temper in August 2010 when he had the bad idea of contradicting the ANCYL president at a press conference held at Chief Albert Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, during which Malema was lashing out at the Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
A seething Julius Malema kicked Fisher out of the press conference room, telling him:
“Here you behave or else you jump. Don't come here with that white tendency, go out bastard, bloody agent. (…)This is not a playground. This is not a beerhall. Don't abuse us in our own space, in our own house... this is my house.”
Malema’s latest mischief happened today, Wednesday, July 6, when he spoke to a throng of about 300 striking members of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), armed with “knobkerries” (bats) and blowing “vuvuzuelas,” who took time from their picket lines to protest against NATO bombing campaign in Libya outside the US embassy in Pretoria.
Some of the protesters carried banners that read: “Mrs. Obama stop kissing South African babies while your husband is bombing Libyan children.”
Then, Julius Malema spoke to the crowd:
“We want to ask a simple question to the imperialists. Are you not tired of seeing blood every year? You blood thirsty imperialists... Every year you are bombing this or that nation, because of your thirstiness for blood. We should all agree that South Africa should not have voted for the resolution... They (the United States) can't think. They don't know politics.”
Fearing to be outdone by Julius Malema, Phil Bokapa, NUMSA deputy president, threw more red meat at the crowd, calling President Obama a white man in a black man’s body!
The Economist recently broached a disquieting future prospect of whom it called “malignant Malema” on the occasion of his “triumphant re-election unopposed as leader of the powerful Youth League of the ruling National Congress (ANC)” that had “South Africans (…) 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.”
Adding:
“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.”
Let’s just hope that Zuma’s wiliness and ruthlessness would have him take this madman out of the picture sooner than later… before he’s elected one of these days President of the Republic of South Africa by the parliamentarians of the de facto one-party state.
"A striking NUMSA member"
Outside the U.S. Embassy
Pretoria, South Africa
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Photo: Tara Meaney/EWN
