ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema is back with nationalisation, the song Dubul’ iBhunu, the notorious ZAR bar and raw fish sagas. It’s high drama in an election year.
For some time the young lion has bestowed upon himself the mantle of chief spokesperson of the economically disenfranchised. But we have to ask, what game is actually being played here?
On the prickly “how” of nationalisation, Malema points to parastatals such as SAA’s “turnaround strategy”. His economics are modelled on government-run institutions and he avers that these are sometimes even better than the unethical thievery of the private sector. It wouldn’t be unkind to suggest that his solution borders on the idea that public thieving is perhaps more ethical, or at least more permissible.
We have waited in vain for his voice on Aurora’s naked exploitation of black labour by men bearing the names Mandela and Zuma. Malema’s silence on the ongoing brutalisation of communities in platinum-mining areas by his comrades in government and business is deafening. What does Malema say to the daylight robbery of the Hitachi/Eskom deal that leaves the nation paying more for electricity and thus more into the coffers of the ANC?
Now media reports reveal a Âscandal: the ANC has given to itself more than 500 mineral-rights prospecting certificates. Malema is calling for the nationalisation of his party’s assets. How noble. Unfortunately, for the perceptive, it comes across as a cheap ploy to cash in on the paper money secured through the electoral trust the people have given the ruling alliance.
On the details of nationalisation, we find bundles of promises of “a better life for all”. This is thick rhetoric calculated to play to the media. Its essence is to save old white capital and serve ANC-linked new black junior partners. Malema says the government must own an arbitrarily determined 60% shareholding stake in the mining sector to bring about the economic freedom of the people.
But someone in Luthuli House forgot to tell him that the government already owns the rights to our minerals. Past the empowerment rhetoric, we did find something menacing: a neo-Nonqgawuse lurking in the corners of Juju’s gifted mouth — a new manifesto of dreams deferred.
Tugging at populism
Meanwhile, Malema tugs at populism with the Dubul’ iBhunu [Shoot the Boer] song, part of the liberation-struggle heritage, and part of illusory economic justice as well.
Why sing such a song when you can use your parliamentary majority to transform the condition of farmworkers into real citizens? It’s 17 years later and the ANC government has delivered only 7% of the land to the people. It would take 100 years to reach 30%. The ANC refused to do the right thing, so Malema resorts to singing provocatively, taunting the landed boere.
There’s an attempt to pin nationalisation ideologically to the guidelines of the Freedom Charter but, in the end, Malema is vague. The question of how this would change racism-skewed development and drive the redistribution of wealth has not been answered.
Have we not seen the project of the deracialisation of wealth — black economic empowerment — bottlenecking with a few bourgeoisie: Mzi Khumalo, Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa and Patrice Motsepe? More than 90% of the value that changed hands over the past 10 years remains trapped in the white wealth reservoir.
It happened in full view of us all. We saw political connection wealth, white guilt cleansing wealth and racial privilege legitimising wealth be the preserve of a few. The ZAR connection, with sushi on naked bodies, tells where Juju is at, even if his heart is with the people.
At ZAR (designated an ANC drinking place by Juju) you can buy a bottle of whisky that costs more than an RDP house. It’s the new politics of feeding fantasy to the people and fighting white racism by showing off some petty black wealth. It’s all about pissing off the white racists instead of obliterating the conditions that make racism possible.
We await the second round of elite pillaging, a programme of steady looting for the next 20 years, hidden by the quasi-radical intimations of Malema. This must be rejected. It promises no structural change. There is a bitter yet simple truth that you won’t find it in the annals of the Freedom Charter — white racism cannot be obliterated by bombast and gluttony. Malema and his comrades must be asked to stay away from our diamonds.
To signal a warning against Malema’s nationalisation crusade is not to endorse Jeremy Cronin’s anti-communist objections, which chime well with the Free Market Foundation’s thinking. We are not for the maintenance of the white male-dominated economic status quo, nor are we blinded by the empty rhetoric of Malema. His nationalisation is a new theft of an opportunity for real change.
His rhetoric conceals and disables what could, with a domino effect, produce a new milieu of justice for all blacks — all the way to the fall of the Constitution’s protection of the (unjust) right of (ill-gotten) property. Malema omits this, and the ANC has never considered changing it with its parliamentary majority.
We have a fantasy that, not too long from now, the streets will speak the language of Egypt. At that moment, the whiskies and sushi parties end. The people shall party proper.