A thought on JM

I don't really understand all of this current fuss about Julius Malema's income. Admittedly I have only read the online articles about it. But every time I read his comments on the matter (which the online papers seem to be using to condemn him), I think he makes a lot of sense.

• Malema does not work for government. Why can he not own a business?
• If his business has been given tenders preferentially because it is owned by Julius Malema, then that is definitely wrong. But the wrong would be primarily with those awarding tenders. If the government officials awarding tenders do so to curry political favour, then they should be brought to book. The same goes if they award tenders to enrich themselves, their families, their friends, or to get kick backs from companies.
• Malema has also not been the ANCYL president forever... is it only the president that the papers say should not benefit from private businesses? What about the second in command? What about local municipal ANCYL leaders? Of course they can have their own businesses. So why can't Malema?
• Malema makes the point that he and his circle of friends and age-mates in the ANC are young with minimal financial responsibilities, and earn good salaries. So they legitimately have more money than they need, and can afford up market lifestyles. I think this is a very reasonable comment. Even if he is earning around R20000 per month, that is a good salary if you don't have big expenses. And if he is receiving an income from business ownership, all the more. And if his friends are doing even better than this in the private sector or in government positions, I think it is likely that they can honestly afford nice cars, nice clothes, and fancy parties.
  

It seems to me that the root of all of this is two beliefs. The first is an accusation that there is some illegality in Malema's finances. Possibly that he is not paying taxes appropriate to his income. But the more serious veiled accusation is that he purposefully uses his political power to get tenders for his companies. Maybe I am too naive, but I think this is unlikely. And at any rate, there is no evidence for it.

The second is a general disapproval of his lavish lifestyle.

A sad fact about human nature is that we tend to resent people who do well for themselves. And justify this by assuming that their success must be due to some sort of illegal or immoral means. The same way people accuse successful foreigners of all sorts of things.

People also tell themselves that he is selling out his own struggle, that he is hypocritical to stand for the poor when he lives this opulent lifestyle. But if you have money, you have money. As long as you don't forget where you come from, to use Malema's own words.

On a personal note, I find excessive displays of wealth a bit distasteful. I recently had to work hard to retain my high opinion of a man I know after seeing his car - it was absurdly lavish. And am not a fan of the hard partying big money spending materialistic thing these ANCYL guys have got going.

So on a personal level I can see Malema's lifestyle and think that it reflects badly on his character (I do). And if I am ever in a position to vote for or against him I can vote against him on that basis.

But as things stand, he is not accountable to me. His money is his own, and he can spend it however he chooses.

Zuma Zuma Zuma

Zuma Zuma Zuma!
(Or perhaps it should be #Zuma #Zuma #Zuma ?)

I haven't blogged in ages so I figured I may as well add my 3 cents to the present furore.

I had a facebook discussion with a friend recently, about what he eloquently called the current "obligation towards political silence." Basically the idea is that one of the most profound and important responsibilities white South Africans have is to shut up.

Which of course is difficult for us, because we are an opinionated lot.

Now I've been watching the Zuma saga unfold, in the wake of the "political silence" conversation.

One interesting thing about how the scandal has gone down this time is that there is not too much vocal white outrage. If you are not white and you want to understand this, this is pretty much what has happened(*):

When Zuma first barged into our white collective consciousness, he seemed to be a lecherous rapist up to his eyeballs in all sorts of fraud and sinister political maneuvering. And what was worse, he was inspiring crowds of black people to get very very angry and sing songs about wanting their machine guns. White South Africans have been raised from birth into a fear that black people want to kill them. So if you get a big enough crowd of them angry enough, all hell is going to break loose. The "swart gevaar," and all of that. And of course on top of all this is his standard two education (or whatever it is), his seeming support of the rabid Malema, his buddies the communists...

So in the white mind, the end was nigh, soon they are going to start burning tires and taking the farms, those crowds Zuma has been whipping into a frenzy, then nationalising everything in sight, then who will be safe... better make sure our passports are in order. We knew we were on the way to becoming the next Zimbabwe, etc etc.

Which is all completely absurd, of course, but there you go, white people were pretty scared. Irrationally scared, but scared nonetheless.

Then he came into power. And nothing much changed. And he suited up and went on international tours like Mbeki. And he seemed to be a pretty jovial fellow at least, at least he seemed to be getting on with people. And putting those commies in their place a bit, ha! (We are still worries about this, but so far so good). And this whole wives thing, well, it is a bit disturbing to us... but it is culture, we suppose. We probably shouldn't mess with that too much. Still, we disapprove. But he's looking pretty snappy in his suit. And at least we have moved past that AIDS denialism debacle. And he has made some good noises about getting serious about fighting crime... so, okay.

Then there is the love child scandal. Shocking. But... we already knew him to be lecherous. A one night stand with a lady young enough to be his daughter. Rape or not, this labelled him as the kind of man who was into one night stands with ladies young enough to be his daughter. And them he got married again TWICE. Good grief. So by the time the love child came along, it was just more of what we had become used to from our president, in this area of his life. Not that we approve, we just weren't shocked anymore.

What happened? Something surely unprecedented in recent South African history - an event white people didn't have much to say about. Sure, we disapproved. Then we lost interest.

So something happened that *never* happens - there was almost no outraged public white voice on this issue!

Which opened the door for something else quite exciting - an outraged public black voice.

Normally in South Africa the outraged black voice is predominantly private. The media and other public spaces are reserved for defense against the loud white voice.

But this time, things changed. Which is rather fantastic, I think.

I would explain further, but I expect that you know what I mean. :)

This was all illustrated beautifully in an M&G article today, where an anonymous ANC NEC has this to say:

"Said the NEC source: "We first thought it was a private matter. But we were surprised that the outcry did not come from white people or foreign media, but from our African constituency. They must vote for us to stay in power and we must listen to them.

"We realised that we need to change our approach or it will cost us in the 2011 local elections and beyond.

"We really want the president to zip up and make sure this doesn't happen again. If it does, it's over. We have nothing left to defend his conduct."






(*) Not my personal opinion!