Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), center right, during a national shutdown protest, organized by the EFF, outside the presidential guest house in Pretoria, South Africa, on Monday. (Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
TThis is a song by the late Bill Withers that creeps up in my subconscious every time I listen to Julius Malema talk about the country of South Africa and what needs to be done to get us out of the difficult situation we are in. from Withers, you know the words of the song I Can’t Write Leftand if you don’t, I urge you to read the lyrics.
It’s about a young man returning from America’s dirty war in Vietnam. Withers gives listeners a chance to understand what war is like through a man who just wants to write a letter to his mother.
The opening words to the song sum up how I feel about politicians such as Malema who talk about “revolution” and “war” for their cause without understanding the true cost.
“… A lot of people write songs about war and government, about social things. But I think about young people, like me, when I was young. I don’t have any more ideas about government or politics or anything. And I think about sex -the type of young people today, that suddenly someone comes and obeys the law. So when someone says ‘Go’ don’t ask anything. They just go.”
When I hear Malema in his soap box, I think of an impressionable person who has struggled under the weight of the worst economic performance for more than a decade and who has read stories of rampant corruption in the high echelons of power. These are women and young people who have seen their life prospects diminish over the years as the imperatives of economic transformation have backfired and black economic empowerment has become a dirty word.
When the drum of the revolution is being beaten, I wonder if there is a thought of the consequences of the dangerous romanticism about the struggle of South Africa – it is brutal. We forget where we came from. Whether intentionally or not, the call of the Economic Freedom Fighters for a “national death” evokes the national insecurity felt during the July 2021 protests. With Durban and large parts of Kwazulu-Natal burning, we all feel the experiment of our transition to democracy collapsing before our eyes .
Politics is lazy to play on people’s fear, whether you think the March 20 shutdown was successful or not.
More than 354 people died during that week in July 2021 and more than 150 000 jobs were lost after protests triggered by the legal problems of one person, former president Jacob Zuma. If you ask anyone who has felt the real effects of the protests, either through the loss of a breadwinner or a job, I doubt they will consider it a worthwhile sacrifice to ensure a short prison stay for the former president.
There is a dangerous romanticism to the struggle that opportunists should not exploit, despite their dismay at governments struggling to meet the most basic service needs of their people. With a young population and an impatient population, South Africa, like other emerging market countries, is at a critical point. If the state, big business and all other influential spheres of society continue to ignore the situation, the romanticism of the past struggle will only grow stronger by the day and opportunists will take advantage of it.