Julius Malema: South Africa's fiery politician mellows
January 24, 2015
By Andrew Harding*
[caption id="attachment_15852" align="alignleft" width="300"] Members of the EFF in their red workers uniforms are sworn into parliament[/caption]
Julius Malema slipped quietly into the room, looking cheerful, perhaps a little slimmer than on our last encounter, and quite the opposite of the rabble-rousing, Mugabe-in-the-making demagogue that his enemies and critics in South Africa and abroad still like to portray.
“Marriage,” he said by way of an explanation, and fell onto a sofa with a happy sigh. He recently married a woman from his neighbourhood in Limpopo. But as the “commander-in-chief” of South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party began our interview, two things soon struck me. The first is that Mr Malema has evolved from a hectoring, skittish, “rough-diamond” of a politician into something much more polished and impressive. The second thing – which grew on me over the course of perhaps half an hour of talking – was quite how imprudent South Africa’s governing ANC were to lose hold of him, and let him break off to form the EFF. “The ANC is not only threatened [by us], it repeats us. Everything we say, the ANC comes after us to repeat. We’re fighting the issue of the land, we’re saying economic freedom in our lifetime, they’re saying the same,” he declared. And he has a point. The EFF won only 6.3% of the national vote last year, but they behave – and rattle the ANC – as if they were the official opposition, routinely setting the agenda. “I know for a fact that the EFF is listed as a threat to the state by the intelligence [agencies]… The instruction is ‘find anything wrong so we can nail him down,'” said Mr Malema, while admitting he had no proof. #PayBackTheMoney Mr Malema still calls himself a socialist, anti-imperialist revolutionary, determined to destroy the system from within. “I’m not a member of the establishment,” he told me vehemently, when I mentioned his MP’s perks and salary. But he’s found a way to merge that rhetoric with a more aspirational, individualistic message about getting ahead that borrows from figures like Hugo Chavez. I suggested that his approach was riddled with hypocrisy – a claim he batted away with his usual confidence. “We are finding a way of living with capitalism while fighting it. Our struggle is not to stay in the shacks – it is not a struggle of sameness.” [caption id="attachment_15853" align="alignright" width="300"]

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