Elections tend to bring out the worst in some politicians - they appear to believe that they have carte blanche to vilify opponents while making campaign promises they have no hope of fulfilling.Making empty promises can sometimes be dangerous. The pledge, decades ago, by ANC leaders to secure free university education for all has come back to haunt the party.But when politicians cross the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, tell blatant lies or unfairly disparage their rivals ahead of an election, they usually get away with it. We simply shrug and reason that it is silly season.Consider these comments by Julius Malema in Soweto last week as he drummed up support for the EFF election manifesto launch in Orlando later this month.Telling supporters it was their ''revolutionary duty'' to have more babies, Malema said white South Africans wanted to reduce black numbers so that they could take over politically.''Give birth and expand because if we do not make children we are going to disappear as a black nation,'' he said.''White people do not want us to give birth because they know we are more than them. So that they can be more than us and the day they are more than us they will take over our land.''Anyone with even a passing knowledge of South Africa's population dynamics will know that Malema's utterances, apart from being racially divisive, are arrant nonsense.His doomsday scenario can, and will, never happen, and all thinking citizens know this. That is why the majority of our people signed up for a united, non-racial democracy in 1994.Any economist worth his salt would also take issue with Malema's cheap, dishonest and backward ''go forth and multiply'' mantra.Unemployment, particularly among our youth, is already at a devastating level. Placing more pressure on already impoverished households is the last thing they need.Malema would have better served his supporters if he had advised them to study hard, strive for a good job or start a business...