Malema

If any of you remember... last year my birthday wish was to have tea with Julius Malema.

Well I was very excited last week, you must know. I thought my chance had finally come - I heard Julius Malema was coming to speak at Rhodes. So the day before the event I found some ANCYL people chilling on a wall on campus and offered to pick Julius up from the airport.

They laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed :)

So I didn't end up going to pick up Malema from the airport. And in the end, he didn't end up coming to the Progressive Youth Alliance meeting he had been scheduled to address. But I went along to the meeting anyway.

And aside from the fact that it was mostly 3 hours of sitting around waiting for things to happen, I had a great time.

A journ student from Rhodes put up a bit of an account of the event here. It is funny how two people can have such a different take on the same situation. As I left the venue at the end I bumped into a friend and I asked her how she felt about the event... she said she found it very disturbing. Why? I don't know really. Perhaps it is that same "Polokwane" image we saw on TV, of dancing shouting hordes of people. If you look with one eye, it is people having a good time, getting into the spirit f things. If you look with another eye, it is a marauding mass of angry violent people who are going to shoot you with their machine guns.

Which it isn't. Really. Its mostly people having a good time, supporting their party. And if the way you do that is shout "hah!" and sing songs in your own language (not english!)... well... hey, whats wrong with that?

I am a but of a Youth League sympathiser myself. So I'm probably biased :)
And they can get carried away, to be sure. And they really shouldn't mock people in their speeches. It is just coarse. And at this particular event they *really* shouldn't have lied about Malema not being allowed on campus (That really was a lie, I don't know why they did it. Probably a combination of covering themselves for not telling people Malema wasn't coming, and general anger at Rhodes admin.)

But ja. This idea of people in yellow t-shirts being angry violent neanderthals is really not ok.

The day before the meeting, after I asked the ANCYL guys sitting on the wall if I could pick up Malema from the airport, and after thay had finished laughing, we sat and chatted for about half an hour. About Zuma and my qualms about him and COPE and separation of powers and what not. And it was all very pleasant. And I saw them at the event itself and waved and they laughed at me all over again. And it was great.

I wish people could just get a glimpse of the other side of these events, and this bunch of people. And realise their fear and indignation are a bit misplaced.