Champion of poor lines rich pockets

It is hard to be a hypocrite. Ask Julius Malema. To play to the gallery and lament the ills of the rich while running to the same people for succour in difficult times must be an intolerable burden.

How many people would subscribe to an anti-capitalist dictum, yet run to a private hospital for "flu-like symptoms" and still sleep soundly at night? Who would have thought that the champion of the poor, the nemesis of "imperialists" and "white capital", would entrust his wellbeing to a system that he so despises?

Mediclinic is an international private hospital group that has been listed on the JSE since 1986. Malema's youth league announced "a mother of all protests" to the JSE to commemorate ANC stalwart Oliver Tambo's birthday on October 27. Marching in protest against a JSE-listed company while supporting it is loony tunes!

Malema has said that "the real enemy is white monopoly capital". Interestingly, the group's head office is in Stellenbosch. While a BEE component is present, there is a dominant European and Arab identity in Mediclinic's DNA. And wasn't it our "pro-poor Malema" who lashed out at the Stellenbosch mafia?

Apart from the shareholding structure at Mediclinic, a cursory look at the 2010 directors' list reveals, among others: Edwin de la Harpe, Charles Cohen, Daniel Petrus Meintjes, Stefanus Pretorius, Reginald Martin, Thorsten Olen Wiesinger, Albert Anton Raath, Desmond Kent Smith, Christiaan Mauritz van der Heever, Wynand Louw van der Merwe and Matthys Hendrik Visser. I doubt that they come from Seshego.

Of course, there are black names, Mamphela Ramphele and Kayalethu Makaba, but the bottom line is that Juju's money is not going to the poor!

Malema wants a revolution against the very people that he supports with his money. He is not the first person to divorce his creed from his deeds, but he stands out as a popular leader who has appropriated "the poor" for his own benefit.

His praise singers, who contend "he is one of us" or "he speaks our language", must wake up and smell the coffee.

I don't blame Julius. He is doing what I do. When I am sick, I don't pontificate about the evils of white capital, investors and capitalism. I go to the guy who can do a competent job of saving my life. This is the only life I have, and I am not prepared to play politics with it. Juju is the same, except he wants everyone else to revolt while he digs deep in his pocket to keep "the bad guys" in business.

I understand his natural instinct for self-preservation, but I cannot accept that it is proper for him to spew vitriol at a free-market, investor-driven economic system yet run to the same hated system to palliate his illness.

Why is he spending his not-so-hard-earned money beefing up a system that he alleges is responsible for the impoverishment of the destitute? I'll tell you why: because he is just a man, a weak man who is merely looking out for himself. He is not a champion of the poor and he is not a messiah to the unemployed youth who are too disheartened to break free from the poverty that hangs like an albatross around their necks.

Juju lives by the dictates of libertarianism and capitalism. What a pity that so many are so busy kissing his ass that they don't see him for what he is: a man who is making hay while the sun shines.