![]() Could he do more than this? Could he obtain high office in the land and help to wreck it completely as his great hero, Robert Mugabe, has wrecked Zimbabwe – to Malema’s loud cheers? It seems likely that South Africa might soon be ruled by an ANC-EFF coalition, in which case the EFF would dominate the ANC, which is weak and divided, and Malema would be very close to supreme power. He has certainly helped to make South Africa unattractive to investors and would-be employers. How dangerous is Julius Malema? He has certainly proved his potential for disruption and destruction. ![]() Malema’s chant ‘Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!’ his refusal to say he would never ask for the slaughter of white people the EFF’s “militant armed structure” an assault rifle fired in a public place the looting of shops by the EFF Malema’s earlier call – while he was in the ANC – for the democratically elected government of Botswana to be overthrown the raised fists the reference to its leaders as “soldiers” and “commanders” – all of these seem to be interpreted by the questioner as signs of the deeply peaceful nature of the EFF and Julius Malema. This was after they had heard Malema saying – twice – that anybody who tried to go to work would ‘meet his maker’. One said that the EFF had never been violent ever, and was no threat at all. Some of the questioners simply praised the EFF and welcomed the shutdown. They seemed to cringe before him, asking only the most respectful, mainly technical questions about the EFF’s plans for the extent and actions of the shutdown. Read more: Taboo debate: For better or worse after Apartheid? – Andrew Kenny If this were not bad enough, the response from the journalists at question time was even worse. He repeated this threat in case anybody had any doubts about what he meant. He emphasised that he would not stop anybody going to work tomorrow but then emphasised, more loudly, that anyone who did so would ‘meet his maker’. Perhaps it was DA agents in red EFF costumes who rampaged through H&M shops in the same year.) (Perhaps it was a DA agent disguised as Malema who fired those automatic rifle shots at an EFF rally in 2018. He said that if there were any violence tomorrow it would be because of DA agents provocateurs, which is a convenient, if disingenuous, way of shifting the blame for any trouble onto the DA. He combined menace with obfuscation, adopting now a militant, threatening tone and then a tone of quiet reasonableness. His rambling press conference on Wednesday and, even worse, the questions from the journalists confirmed everything I have said above. Callers-in to radio shows said they agree that his shutdown would help to overcome electricity blackouts, unemployment, crime, poor service delivery and other horrid things but, like Malema, they never explained how. Commentators praised his oratory and his leadership. That he contradicts himself with almost every sentence, threatening violence with one breath and peacefulness with the next, raised no eyebrows. The fact that he spends a fortune on capitalist luxuries for himself while posing as a working-class hero, did not seem to trouble anybody. His rampant hypocrisy was never questioned. His menacing banalities were listened to respectfully as if they were full of wisdom and originality.
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