Malema's big con: encouraged by master Zuma

What will Juju's suspension deliver to all those young, poverty-stricken people who believed in him as their saviour?

IT would be easy to write about the applause that went through our newsroom on Thursday as Derek Hanekom read the last sanction from his iPad. It was the moment we had sat down in front of the office TV for - when the young man from Limpopo would get his comeuppance and be vanquished from our body politic.

It would be easy to be delighted that Julius Malema, the dark spot on the ANC's soul, might be pushed from his powerful pedestal, delivering us from more years of vitriol, disharmony and bullying.

It would be nice to be cautiously optimistic that things are going to get a little nicer, friendlier, calmer. That we could pretend for a while that politics is ostensibly about robust, but mature, engagement.

But what is more difficult to fathom is just what is going to fundamentally change after Thursday. Some commentators have described the sanction as one of the most significant moments in South Africa, as if Malema's defeat delivered this country from an evil force.

But has it really?

What exactly was removed as Hanekom read out the outcome of the disciplinary hearing against Malema and his cohorts?

Did it change anything significant on a real and fundamental level, besides a shift within the ANC, the realignment of intra-party forces and, for Jacob Zuma, an elegant solution to a very inelegant problem?

Most importantly, what will it deliver all those young, unemployed, poverty-stricken people who believed in Malema as their saviour?

What is to become of the kids who, only a few weeks ago, limped away from their economic freedom march blistered and dehydrated, but with no real solution to the hopelessness of their lives?

They are the ones who have been conned - not only by Malema and the youth league, but by the ANC's senior leaders.

They are the fodder of election campaigns, who will never don purple pimp suits and prance around on a pretty white beach in Mauritius; who will never park their padded backsides on the leather couches of Katzy's bar in Johannesburg, sipping champagne and whiskies whose names they can't even pronounce while half-naked young things totter about.

Malema's ability to silence, out-insult and out-crass people like Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Helen Zille and Lindiwe Mazibuko might have provided us with a gluttonous feast of shocking headlines but, in the greater scheme of things, those were minor moments of hysteria.

The real and frighteningly lasting damage that the upstart from Limpopo has caused lies in the false promises he peddled to South Africa's young people.

For it is these kids, malnourished from a meagre diet of slogans and lies, who bought into the Malema dream.

And who can really, really blame them?

There might have been a small group of black youngsters on Thursday night in Malema's home town of Seshego who celebrated his downfall, but they are in the minority. It would have been hard for them to miss the evidence of Malema and his cronies' upward mobility and not to have rejoiced in its end.

But the rest of our children believed Malema - that they, too, could inherit far more than the earth.

When Malema spoke of nationalising the mines and banks, of taking land away from white owners, those youngsters found something much more than the idealistic promises of the Freedom Charter and the habitual election slogans that there would - eventually - be a better life for all of them.

Fact is, the young blacks who marched through Johannesburg and who vandalised the inner city at the start of Malema's disciplinary hearing, exemplify the worst possible statistics. They are the wretched of our country: African, poor, badly educated and hopelessly unemployable. They are the time bomb that will one day explode in our middle-class faces when they realise that they have fallen off the rainbow nation.

But do we only blame the woodwork boy for this big con?

While he must surely carry a significant part of the blame, our president must shoulder a hefty share too.

At one stage, Malema had a master called Jacob Zuma - the same man who some years ago said Malema was presidential material.

And it was in Zuma's name that Malema honed and perfected his skills as the country's chief rabble-rouser.

Who can forget "I will kill for Zuma", "100% Zuma" and the contemptible sexist defence of the president during his rape trial?

Then, Malema served his purpose and master exceptionally well, helping mount a successful bid to rid the country and the ANC of the autocracy of Thabo Mbeki.

Will the youth from Seshego defeat the man from Nkandla? We won't have to wait long to find out.

Zuma is the Frankenstein in the creation of the Malema monster. And, as the monstrous creation turns on his master, it is difficult to muster much sympathy. Far better to reserve our compassion for the lost children of the Malema generation.