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(THESOUTHAFRICAN) Review – ‘An Inconvenient Youth: Julius Malema & the ‘new’ ANC’

Review – ‘An Inconvenient Youth: Julius Malema & the ‘new’ ANC’

It is as though the author had forgotten that Malema is, as well as a sinner, a politician.
By TheSouthAfrican.com on 24 October, 2012 4:59 pm in Books,
by George Hull

An Inconvenient Youth: Julius Malema & the ‘new’ ANC by Fiona Forde

With the Mangaung conference approaching, and Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s charges stacking up against Julius Malema, he faces a make-or-break moment. Now, more than ever, we need an in-depth understanding of the expelled ANC Youth League President and his power base.

At first suspecting the Irish journalist was an “agent”, Malema later warmed to Fiona Forde and, over two years, granted her hundreds of hours of interviews and access. An Inconvenient Youth – released this month in an updated international edition – tells us what she discovered.

Forde, like many who have spent time with Malema one-to-one, praises his intelligence and charm. He is “thoughtful”, “emotionally open”, “extremely clever” – a “political genius”, even. This does not stop her confronting him with the series of kickbacks and freebies her sources agree companies gave Malema for Limpopo tenders. The best part of the book talks us through his evasive answers. At one point, not denying a 10% holding in one of the implicated firms, Malema can only say, a bit desperately, “But have you seen the money go into my account?” The court will hopefully demand better answers in the weeks to come.

To place her subject in context, the author takes us through some of the ANC history Malema himself so often invokes. The idea is to draw illuminating parallels, but it is unclear what Forde thinks these are. She likens the Malema faction to the anti-communist nationalists of the 1950s – leaving us wondering why, in that case, it is in the ’50s communist idiom of National Democratic Revolution that Malema articulates his message. There is talk of a return to élitism; but Malema and Zuma bear little resemblance to the ANC’s founding élite of overseas-educated aristocrats to whom she compares them. She then alternately criticises AB Xuma for not capitulating early enough to the militant youth of his time, and Jacob Zuma for not disciplining young upstarts in the way Xuma did.

This inconclusive historical analysis leaves a void, which Forde fills with amateur shrinkery. She puts the violence of Malema’s rhetoric down to his having reached maturity after the armed struggle – “to this day he tries to re-enact the war he feels he missed out on”. His alleged “angry outlook on life” she attributes – based on nothing but a quotation from Achille Mbembe – to a “self-hatred” which engenders “racism”. The book abounds with ill-judged, unsubstantiated speculations of this kind.

It is as though Forde had forgotten that Malema is, as well as a sinner, a politician. One does not need to suffer from “war envy” or “negrophobia” to think South Africa’s economic policies over the last sixteen years have contributed to its problems. Malema’s alternative proposals – nationalisation, forced land redistribution, closer economic ties with Zimbabwe – may well be catastrophically misguided. If so, Forde would have done well to explain why, and why, despite this, these ideas have such a large uptake.

As things stand, we will have to wait a while longer for a book which makes sense of the Malema phenomenon.

Labels: ANC, JULIUS MALEMA

posted by MrK @ 4:03 AM