The Times Editorial: The violence and ill-discipline outside the ANC's headquarters in Johannesburg's city centre yesterday is simply unacceptable.

There is no way that ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema - whose disciplinary hearing was the cause of the mayhem - can even attempt to explain away the reasons why his supporters behaved the way they did.

Did throwing stones and glass bottles at police officers and journalists really achieve any aim, apart from telling the rest of South Africa and the world that the league and its supporters were equally out of line?

What was displayed yesterday on our TV screens says everything about the impact of the current leadership of the ANC and its subsidiary organisations.

It says that Malema's utterances, for which he is being charged, have been permitted precisely because there is a vacuum of strong leadership within the ANC.

As author of a Malema book, journalist Fiona Forde recently asked whether Malema would have been allowed to say the things he has if the ANC had stronger leaders? Would he have been allowed to flourish under Thabo Mbeki or Nelson Mandela?

Malema's supporters yesterday acted just like their leader.

Because their leader has been given licence to speak his mind in an unfettered, provocative and reactionary manner, they too had the licence to behave in a criminally liable manner.

Would it have been possible for league supporters to have peacefully showed their support for Malema as he faced a disciplinary hearing? Absolutely. But only if they had a leader whose behaviour was one of disciplined engagement - and Malema certainly does not epitomise this.

Instead, the ANC yesterday found that their chickens had come home to roost. By allowing Malema's contempt for authority to flourish, they had extended the right to his supporters to be disrespectful, violent and unruly. No one else but the ANC must take the blame for this.