Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), center right, during a national shutdown protest, organised by the EFF, outside of the presidential guest house in Pretoria, South Africa, on Monday. (Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
There’s a song by the late Bill Withers that creeps up in my subconscious every time I listen to Julius Malema’s rants about the state of South Africa and what should be done to get us out of the difficult situation we are in. If you are a fan of Withers, you know the words of the song I Can’t Write Left-handed, and if you aren’t, I’d urge you to read the lyrics.
It’s about a young man who returns from fighting America’s dirty war in Vietnam. Withers gives the listener an opportunity to know what war is like through the man just wanting to write a letter to his mother.
His introductory words to the song sums up my feelings about politicians such as Malema who talk up “revolution” and “war” for their cause without understanding its true cost.
“… Lots of people write songs about wars and government, very social things. But I think about the young guys, who were like I was, when I was young. I had no more idea about any government or political things or anything. And I think about those kinds of young guys now, who all of sudden somebody comes up and they’re very law abiding. So if somebody says ‘Go’ they don’t ask any questions. They just go.”
When I hear Malema on his soap-box, I think of impressionable people who have struggled under the weight of a badly performing economy for more than a decade and who have read tales of rampant corruption in the higher echelons of power. These are young women and men who’ve seen their life prospects diminish over these years as transformation imperatives of the economy have taken a backseat and black economic empowerment has become a dirty word.
When the drums of revolution are being beaten, I wonder if there is any thought of the consequences of a dangerous romanticism about South African struggle — it was brutal. We are forgetting from whence we came. Whether purposefully or not, the Economic Freedom Fighters’ call for a “national shutdown” stirred up national feelings of insecurity that we all felt during the July 2021 protests. With Durban and large parts of Kwazulu-Natal on fire, we all felt the experiment of our transition into democracy was collapsing before our eyes.
It’s lazy politics to play on people’s fears, whether you think the 20 March shutdown was successful or not.
More than 354 people lost their lives over that week in July 2021 and more than 150 000 jobs that were lost in the aftermath of protests triggered by the legal troubles of one man, former president Jacob Zuma. If you ask anyone who has felt the real effect of the protest, either through the loss of a breadwinner or a job, I doubt they’d consider it a worthwhile sacrifice to ensure a short prison stay for the former president.
There’s a dangerous romanticism to the struggle that we shouldn’t allow opportunists to exploit, despite our disappointment with a government that is battling to meet the most basic service needs of its people. With a young population and impatient populace, South Africa, much like other emerging market nations, is at a critical point. If the state, big business and every other influential sphere of society continue to ignore their plight, the romanticism of struggles past will only grow stronger by the day and opportunists will take advantage of it.