Not very long ago the images would have delivered an almost existential jolt to many South Africans — Luthuli House besieged by ANC supporters and President Jacob Zuma’s portrait licked by flames on burning T-shirts held aloft for the cameras. But we are harder to shock now.
Fifteen months from the party’s 2012 elective conference at Mangaung, the scenes outside the building where Julius Malema’s disciplinary hearing were taking place were turbulent, but they were not surprising. The old rules no longer prevail and the internal gyroscope that maintained the ANC’s course for the best part of 99 years has been broken.
That, far more than any ideological shift, is the legacy of the grinding battle for supremacy between Thabo Mbeki and Zuma.
It took years to get to this point. The former president, and the man whose path to succession he tried so hard to block, at first honoured the outward forms of ANC discipline, not fighting in public but in the dark, with the weapons of conspiracy and state power — spy agencies, law enforcement, business deals and scandal.
It was not until the Polokwane conference that open contempt for a serving president and his allies was licensed. That was a decade after the Mafikeng conference at which Mbeki took the top job.
Julius Malema has reached this point with Zuma much more quickly. The path had already been beaten smooth and the youth league president has no real truck with the traditions of the movement.
We hold no brief for those traditions. In many ways they are ill suited to a modern democracy. We would like to see a more transparent contest for leadership within the movement that is the central institution in our national life.
Nevertheless, we are glad that the ANC leadership has found the will to deal with Malema, who threatens to destroy much more than the traditions of the party.
We don’t buy the campaign for “economic freedom in our lifetime”, which is really a project to fatten the rentier class, of which he is such a prominent, chubby example. The victims of that programme won’t be the media, or white capital, or any of the other shibboleths of his faux-radical speeches — they will be poor and unemployed South Africans, living in shoddy dwellings at the end of crumbling roads alongside bankrupt mines.
And Malema’s attack on the nonracial project of the ANC will only make it harder for the difficult conversations that we still need to have about our appalling history if we are to move forward.
Of course, it is clear that, having embarked on this approach, Zuma and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe are going to have to stay the course. If they falter their many enemies will move swiftly and savagely against them. The fact that the discipline is so clearly lopsided, with no action forthcoming on the police leasing scandal (to choose only the most obvious example), will provide plenty of ammunition.
The president will be heartened by the absence of coherent political support for Malema — the crowds who came out for him were small and leaderless, giving the lie to his “voice of the voiceless” claim, but he must know from his own experience that after the blitzkrieg comes Stalingrad.
For more news and multimedia on ANC Youth League president Julius Malema click here.
Hooked on victory
By the time this newspaper hits the streets the Springboks will be in New Zealand beginning their bid to become the first side in the 24-year history of the Rugby World Cup to win back-to-back titles.
Despite the depth of experience in the squad (a total of 1224 caps) there are major question marks hanging over their heads, the most prominent of which is the role of captain John Smit.
He is no longer the first-choice hooker but coach Peter de Villiers has sworn blind that Smit will lead the Boks against Wales in their opening encounter on September 11. His role after that is uncertain.
There is no question about the man’s immense leadership skills but it is unclear whether this ability will be worth risking the performance of the entire scrum.
There are broader concerns, too, not least about tactics. As De Villiers has said on many occasions, there are no bonus points for tries at the World Cup and if it’s unattractive rugby the Boks have to play to win then so be it.
So we’re nervous. So what. We’re also excited. South Africans got a taste of the drug called winning in the epoch-defining 1995 home victory and we never lost the appetite for it in all the “almost” and “not quite” years that followed.
Much as in 2007 when we won in Paris, if our team returns with the cup in hand South Africans will once again pour onto the country’s streets. We won’t be there to spread trash and smash things but to celebrate the clear, shared high of victory.
God knows, we could do with a moment like that right now.