The South African media have been awash with statements and reports about Julius Malema’s call for blacks to seize white people’s land. This is in light of an ongoing legal battle, caused by such statements he had made in the past. The court case has been postponed to 2017, but the impending legal trouble hasn’t stopped him from making more calls for his members and other black South Africans to commit violence and theft. In fact, the impending court case may be the reason for his sudden renewed rants.
Malema has become famous based on his ability to radicalise and mobilise people. As ANC Youth League leader, he was instrumental in helping Zuma’s rise to power. After being ousted from the ANC, he established the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). This radical force has risen to become a substantial political player in South Africa.
The key policy of the EFF is about seizing land. Taking advantage of a youth that feels disenfranchised and jaded, the EFF has radicalised a large following. While many have become used to their borderline racist utterings and calls for theft and genocide, Malema’s recent statements bode ill.
“When we leave here, you will see any beautiful piece of land, you like it, occupy it, it belongs to you… It is the land that was taken from us by white people by force through genocide,” he said, calling for mass land seizures similar to Zimbabwe.
He has also been reported as stating that whites do not need to be slaughtered… “yet.”
Malema’s rhetoric and the ideology he is espousing is based on a collectivist and fallacious view of history, that treats whites as unitary actors that were all culpable in racial crimes. He ignores the vast majority of innocent whites who were also victims of an authoritarian regime and a great number of individual whites who fought to end Apartheid and other systems of racial prejudice.
The truth inconveniences Malema and his narrative, so he has constructed a fiction in which all whites are responsible for racism, genocide and violence:
“They (whites) found peaceful Africans here. They killed them. They slaughtered them like animals. We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now. What we are calling for is the peaceful occupation of the land and we don’t owe anyone an apology for that,” Malema said, as reported by Independent Online.
Peaceful occupation, backed up by forceful evictions and threats of violence, of course. Malema no doubt means that the occupation will be peaceful as long as the current owners surrender with any resistance.
Malema has tempered his statements with assurance that his ‘revolution’ will not be violent:
“You are troubled because of what you have done to us because you think we are like you. We are not like you, no white man will be driven to the sea. We… need you to see black people prospering.”
But this is no cause for calm. He is still calling for vast nationalisation that will be backed up by violence. Don’t believe the rhetoric: He is calling for a war.
It is very hard to believe that Malema is truly a socialist, but rather a socialist leader. He doesn’t believe in the humility of living like his plebeian followers. He lives like an aristocrat – benefiting from the capitalist system he decries. What his racial rhetoric may rather be in aid of is a power play.
If his legal woes do catch up to him, he needs to ensure that his followers are radicalised enough to save him or turn him into a political martyr. He may not truly believe in his classless cause, but he needs it to ensure his power and safety.
Whites are a scapegoat to empower Malema’s political empire. He needs an angry following and whites are a good punching bag to direct the mob towards.
Like any elite, Malema is planning the sustainability of his wealth and power. Unfortunately for South Africa, his power is inextricably linked to his ability to incite racial hatred. It should come as no surprise that he is calling for mass theft and violence when it is on this foundation that he rose to power.
As rational South Africa, we have to reject the rhetoric. We have to have a firm grasp of history and good policy. Mass seizing of farm land will result in famine, and a destruction of property rights will collapse the country. It cannot prosper under any sort of race if its people cannot be assured of the right to their property.
There are plenty of solutions to the land problem in South Africa. These have to be posed rationally as an alternative to the hatred of the EFF. This is crucial to maintaining peace and prosperity in this country. If we fail, it will not bode well for this country.
In this article
Vicky
Wrong. He really does hate whites.
Steven van Staden
I don’t think anyone has claimed that Malema doesn’t hate Whites. He is as internationally notorious for his violent racist disposition as he is for his compulsive and habitual lying.
Vicky
Moesie is another one who gets a boner when white farmers(130+ in 2016 alone) get slaughtered. I prefer Malema to Moesie, at least the former is honest.
Steven van Staden
“Honest”? He told the Oxford Union “SA is no home of racism. We need to usher in an international non-racial society. We in SA as Black and White – we co-exist as people. We (Blacks) have extended a hand of friendship. Racists don’t deserve yo live among those who want a united SA – Black and White. We remain brothers. We need a world that recognise (sic) human beings and not colour – it starts with me. In South Africa we want to lead by example. Racism has got no place where democracy and prosperity has to take place. The colonists and the colonised must share territory because there’s a place for everyone in SA. Human beings must be treated with respect and dignity. We comply with every piece of legislation in the country. We carry no weapons.” There’s much more, and then there’s the other side that we hear here. His only truthful statement at Oxford was that “Zuma is intellectually challenged.”
Vicky
I meant honest about his lust for war. Twitter is banning accounts left and right. We are witnessing another MySpace situation unfolding, good times.
Steven van Staden
It riles me that Disqus and Twitter are censoring. Better that they blank out the comment warning, ‘Comment might Offend; Click to Open” or some such system which I have seen on Disqus while a comment was being approved. We need to know of the most nasty, threatening, disgusting views, which should not be censored, and that’s why we need to fight this proposed Hate Speech Bill which will have us all silenced to witness the death of democracy. There can be no freedom without freedom of speech.
Vicky
I saw a thread with 200 comments dissappear on EWN yesterday.
Steven van Staden
What’s EWN (I’m a recluse)?
Vicky
Eye Witness News.
Vicky
Morality is entirely subjective. What you might deem disgusting, I might deem beautiful.
Steven van Staden
I don’t want to know about the depravities going on behind closed doors among consenting adults, but I do demand the right to know that I am being threatened. Political correctness is a deceit. It contrives to hide not only opinion but truth and fact, and it is actually a sop to terrorism because its purpose is to silence anyone whose views might arouse violent responses in those whose well-worn behaviour patterns are anything but politically correct. It’s like destroying a beautiful plant so that a housebreaker can’t use it for cover, or getting rid of your Jaguar in case it arouses grasping envy. Unfortunately political correctness is a failing of the liberal philosophy I so respect, and there are signs that its protection and tolerance of its opponents is proving to be its downfall.It’s very sad to be entering an Orwellian age.
Vicky
I enjoy your comments. You should start a blog or come and write for us at praag. It is always a good experience reading a First Amendment guy on SA sites. Although if I were to tell you about all my convictions you would like me less.
Steven van Staden
Thanks. I think we’d all like each other a lot less if we knew all the opposing convictions. But there should be enough space for us all if more of it could be filled with decent values. I’m too long-winded to write a blog. I feel it a duty to speak out about what I believe is right and wrong and good and bad. I wish more people would do so with an open mind. It’s so unfortunate that there appears little hope of us bridging the chasm dividing B & W with the likes of Malema and Ramaphosa stirring up racial hatred. As Nicholas has said, it’s become a fomenting tool because they’re so bereft of constructive, progressive tools and the means to use them. I’m supposed to be learning some Rachmaninoff and I write between practising sessions. Rachmaninoff has to win now!
Vicky
“It’s so unfortunate that there appears little hope of us bridging the chasm dividing B & W with the likes of Malema and Ramaphosa stirring up racial hatred.” Yes, which is why I am a nationalist.
Steven van Staden
I think we need a long debate about whether that’s the problem or the solution, or both, because it seems to me that – to put it bluntly – the low lives are the staunchest nationalists (to use the term loosely) and are enforcing their species of nationalism on the liberal countries that have attracted and welcomed and tolerated them in the face of a total absence of reciprocation and respect for the host people’s culture and values which are on the verge of being destroyed by the alien nationalists. This they do from their self-imposed enclaves which resemble voluntary of homelands. I know this is no revelation, but it’s hard for a liberal multiculturalist to admit, which is why I think someone needs to get a debate going. The trouble is, that debate could not include the likes of Malema, of which there are many, because debating with them is akin to hitting one’s head on a brick wall. They which they covet that others have produced, they take, and that which they don’t covet that others have produced, they destroy, not aware that they are really destroying an holistic entity. It looks like the cultural chasm remains unbridgeable. Let’s hope some dissenter will enter the discussion.
Vicky
I can turn your statement on its head. If the countries you mentioned did not allow immigration, none of this would be happening. Nationalism of one kind acts as a barrier to multiculti + colonialism.
Steven van Staden
It’s a matter of ethical consensus. Look at America’s gains and Germany’s losses when Hitler’s (Socialist) Nationalism was threatening Europe, and the number of valuable South Africans fleeing the ANC and EFF racist threat here and taking their skills and expertise elsewhere. It’s too complex an issue for a few lines.
Zaggeta
Just going to presume you’re not being sarcastic, as this was the one comment that caught my attention.
Morality is not subjective. Taste is subjective. Aesthetics is subjective. A love of Van Gogh is not evil. Murder and rape is. I am pressed for time at the moment, but I may write a Rational Remark on the matter.
Steven van Staden
Please do, but only if you can remain sane, because that’s something we need desperately to hold onto!. How do you argue ethics if your opponent insists that murder and rape are not objectionable? Many in SA evidently think nothing of what we consider inhuman. Sterkte!
Zaggeta
First year Ethics crushed all defenses for moral and cultural relativism for me. Will be writing an article to equip others to argue against the weirdos.
Vicky
Rather debate me. Google Ayn Rand and Objectivism. I am going to take over the comments section of your website by the way. My safe space.
Zaggeta
I can’t share comments for views. And do you really think I’d be co-running a Libertarian/Right-Wing site without knowing who Rand is?
Steven van Staden
err… all I know is that our Rands aren’t worth much anymore, thanks to Malema, Zuma and Co.
Vicky
Are your balls big enough to go and tell an Imam that the murders and rapes of the Prophet M were immoral?
Zaggeta
Doesn’t matter what I do. Just cause someone commits evil doesn’t mean that good doesn’t exist. I have told Muslims that their Prophet committed atrocities. Haven’t told an Imam cause I don’t know any Imams. Even then, I don’t need to tell them. The actions are objectively wrong, as determined by a consistent code of ethics. Doesn’t matter if people don’t know it or not. Ignorantia juris non excusat.
Rory Short
Nicholas you have got it. JM is a self-serving opportunist. The racist tack has proved to be the easiest one for him to follow so he has. He is not interested in the future of South Africa or its people but only in his own future and stoking racist fires seems to him to be the best way to insure it. That is why he admires Robert Mugabe. The trouble is with racist fires they are more than likely to get beyond anybody’s control le alone JM’s.
Steven van Staden
His Afrocentric history is warped and twisted. Of course the indigenous pre-colonial people knew nothing of the concept of land ownership (and note how careful he is not to disclose his meaning of ‘ownership’), and as you point out, he admits nothing of the disastrous African history of land grabs in spite of his political affinity with the Mugabean monster and what was once “the bread basket of Africa’s” chronic food shortages. Malema’s behaviour is unlawful and unconstitutional, but evidently demagogues and tyrants are above any law and Constitution. We eventually got rid of one wicked racial system, only to replace it with another. Whites have been very tolerant, but there is a limit beyond which tolerance ceases to be a virtue. That limit has been exceeded in South Africa.
Peter Leyland
Not to mention in his version of South African history, black tribes all lived peacefully before the appearance of the white man.
Harald Sitta
As long as we have – spoken in US constitutional terms – the 2nd amendment working for every Citizen I do not give too much attention for 1st amendment rants of a lunatic & fanatic. As long as “we’ show guts 7 guns there is no real danger. Only sheep are slaughtered !
Lee Donald
THE EFF and Malema hating 0n everything is a real bore.
Mariano Castrillon
Malema’s hatred for whites is an expression of his deep, vey deep, complex of inferiority. His way of life could not be more” a la westerner”, i.e., the way Europeans live, but alas, he will never be white.
Roger Pacey
It’s hard to believe that Mr Malena is a socialist because he isn’t one. His views are as fascist as they come.
Zaggeta
Socialist – wants to abolish private property. Nationalist – only cares about South Africa. He’s a National Socialist.