On Thursday, more fuel was thrown on Malema’s fire from a most unexpected quarter, courtesy of a formal letter of apology from British High Commissioner to South Africa, Antony Phillipson.
After offering his humble apologies, Phillipson write: “I recognise that this will be deeply disappointing, especially as the delegation applied in advance and some paid for priority service.” However, he continued, he had “no means of intervening in the decision-making process itself which is solely a matter for the Home Office”.
Given that Phillipson is a senior diplomat, and therefore someone who chooses his words extremely carefully, it was interesting to note that he chose to reveal that Malema had, in fact, done everything well in time and that it was Phillipson’s colleagues in the UK who had made the final decision — a line of text that has no doubt convinced the EFF of the dastardly conspiracy by Buckingham Palace and Tony Blair to prevent Malema performing revolution by doing his routine in front of the richest and most privilege twentysomethings in the world before they all retire for a lunch of quail eggs.
I can’t say for sure who’s right and who’s wrong in this case. I’m pretty sure the Windsors don’t stay up at night trying think of ways to destroy Julius Malema, but when, like Malema, you’ve made public your intention to go and visit the queen’s grave in Westminster to make sure she’s dead, and you’re currently famous for singing songs about killing people, you can’t be very surprised if your name is flagged by the vast surveillance systems that run the world.
What I do know, however, is that Malema still has his gift for the grift. Thanks to a single sweep of a British bureaucrat’s pen, he has been transformed in the eyes of his followers from an increasingly isolated and ineffective politician, supported by just five percent of South African voters, to colonialism’s Public Enemy Number One, a man so dangerous to the all-powerful capitalist elite that they won’t even let him touch British soil in case he lights the fire of revolution on it.
Well, after the quail eggs, obviously.
TOM EATON | The empire strikes back, Malema strikes gold
It shouldn’t surprise the EFF CIC that his name is flagged by the vast surveillance systems that run the world
You have to hand it to Julius Malema, and I don’t mean that in the nationalisation-and-confiscation sense. No, I mean that, despite the slow collapse of his party, he’s still the living embodiment of the old populist saying that when life gives you lemons, make persecution lemonade.
On Wednesday, when Malema arrived at OR Tambo for a flight to the UK to speak at Cambridge University and discovered that his visa hadn’t been approved, he tweeted that this was a “clear ... attempt to silence a dissenting political perspective”.
Great Leader had provided the cue, and the party threw itself upon it, banging out a statement that managed to blame not only “bloodthirsty murderers” like Tony Blair but the British royal family, which, the EFF insisted, still has “continued control of the political process in the UK” and was getting revenge on Malema for “the EFF’s posture following the death of their Queen Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor”.
The “posture” (an accidentally revealing choice of words) was, you may recall, a resounding condemnation of the British monarchy for its role in, and enormous benefit from, global colonialism and slavery, laid out in a statement that ended with a remarkably politely-phrased wish that the Queen had joined her family in hell: “If there is really life and justice after death, may Elizabeth and her ancestors get what they deserve.”
On Thursday, more fuel was thrown on Malema’s fire from a most unexpected quarter, courtesy of a formal letter of apology from British High Commissioner to South Africa, Antony Phillipson.
After offering his humble apologies, Phillipson write: “I recognise that this will be deeply disappointing, especially as the delegation applied in advance and some paid for priority service.” However, he continued, he had “no means of intervening in the decision-making process itself which is solely a matter for the Home Office”.
Given that Phillipson is a senior diplomat, and therefore someone who chooses his words extremely carefully, it was interesting to note that he chose to reveal that Malema had, in fact, done everything well in time and that it was Phillipson’s colleagues in the UK who had made the final decision — a line of text that has no doubt convinced the EFF of the dastardly conspiracy by Buckingham Palace and Tony Blair to prevent Malema performing revolution by doing his routine in front of the richest and most privilege twentysomethings in the world before they all retire for a lunch of quail eggs.
I can’t say for sure who’s right and who’s wrong in this case. I’m pretty sure the Windsors don’t stay up at night trying think of ways to destroy Julius Malema, but when, like Malema, you’ve made public your intention to go and visit the queen’s grave in Westminster to make sure she’s dead, and you’re currently famous for singing songs about killing people, you can’t be very surprised if your name is flagged by the vast surveillance systems that run the world.
What I do know, however, is that Malema still has his gift for the grift. Thanks to a single sweep of a British bureaucrat’s pen, he has been transformed in the eyes of his followers from an increasingly isolated and ineffective politician, supported by just five percent of South African voters, to colonialism’s Public Enemy Number One, a man so dangerous to the all-powerful capitalist elite that they won’t even let him touch British soil in case he lights the fire of revolution on it.
Well, after the quail eggs, obviously.
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