He doesn’t say hello or shake hands; instead he orders our photographer to take a picture of him for private use.
ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president JULIUS MALEMA (27) doesn’t seem concerned that SA’s political landscape is being rearranged overnight. He was at the forefront of efforts to remove Thabo Mbeki from the presidency and now he looks smug because Jacob Zuma will probably become president next year. “JZ is like a father to me. I love him,” Malema says.
He’s unfazed about Thabo Mbeki being ousted after devoting more than 50 years to the ANC. “If you and your partner have been together for 25 years it doesn’t mean you can’t divorce or cheat.” And Zuma, he says, is unstoppable. “Don’t stand in his way or you’ll have problems. You’ll be a casualty.”
Malema likes whisky, Armani jeans, action movies and Orlando Pirates. He likes clubbing too but says he’s not a great dancer. Politics dominate his life. “There are no such things as Saturday mornings or weekends for me - it’s just work. I see friends sometimes but they’re comrades. I don’t relate to people who aren’t comrades. I listen to South African music but not American music or anything that represents imperialism, colonialism or indoctrination.”
He slips easily into rhetoric and often refers to “the revolution”. “The revolution is about transferring power from the minority to the majority.”
He’d wipe out the Democratic Alliance if he could. “It’s a racist organisation - it gets votes from old Afrikaner communities. They’re reactionary and represent the legacy of apartheid.”
What does he mean by reactionary? “The DA’s interests don’t lie with South Africa but with the interests of the colonisers.”
Malema’s party always comes before the government. “The interests of the nation are best located in the party. The ANC should have been the only party. The ANC is democracy.”
He shamelessly boasts about the ANCYL’s influence. “Every time they speak you ought to listen to what they say because they determine society’s agenda.”
His mother, Sarah, was a domestic worker and he grew up with his grandmother, Flora, in Seshego in Limpopo. He never knew his father. “I grew up in a poverty-stricken family. As a child I never sang in a choir or played soccer. I know only politics - I’m a political animal.”
The man who says he fights on behalf of the poor does so from his residence in the wealthy suburb of Sandton in Johannesburg.
Does he feel guilty about his luxurious lifestyle? No, because leaders in his position have to be presentable, he says. He’d like to move back to Limpopo one day, buy some land and farm cattle. He doesn’t have a life partner and isn’t looking for one. His work is his life.
A son from a past relationship, Ratanang (2), lives with his mother in Polokwane and Malema last saw him a month ago. “I’ve recently bought him gear from various soccer clubs, Chelsea, Manchester United and so on and, English imperialism aside, he must choose which he likes.
“He looks like me. You get softer every time you see your child.”
In that case visit him often, Malema. For SA’s sake.
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