Some readers may have resented The Mercury’s publication of Julius Malema’s lengthy rant on January 30 as a galling waste of space. However, it is important to afford him the opportunity to remind us of the dystopian future he envisages in which contrary views would be prohibited, persecuted and punished.
Demagoguery is not a sober, reasoned form of articulation. It’s a blend of emotional manipulation, contradiction, narcissism, paranoia and fanaticism – all of which colour Malema’s rants. His obsession with the myth of white supremacy reflects the white derangement syndrome (WDS) he exhibits.
To assuage his WDS, he blames whites for all the ills and hardships black people are enduring, which, ironically, are the result of the ANC’s implementation of the Freedom Charter – the same servitude to which Malema and the EFF are solidly wedded. Yet he claims the EFF can remedy the situation by a more radical assertion of Marxism. To appreciate the outcome of such thinking, one has only to look at the long-suffering plight of people in Zimbabwe and Cuba.
Malema says, “We are determined to uphold the laws of the country.” Yet he strenuously objects to the “injustice” of being “dragged to court” for violating the law regarding discharging a firearm in public.
He claims the EFF is “not a racist organization.” But as the world saw from a screen in the White House last March, Malema incites the killing of whites. Under oath in court, he called all white people “criminals” who “must be driven into the sea” and that “any white who remains here is going to be killed” (quoted in Biznews, 24 June 2025). Of course, prior to that testimony, he called for whites to be “slaughtered” at some future point, which, as the revolutionary commander in chief, is his prerogative to determine.
Like his ideological comrades in the MKP and ANC, Malema bangs the drum of landlessness. If there was any credibility in that, the outcomes of the cases of land restitution claims would provide proof. But in 90% of the cases, the claimants have preferred to accept the cash value rather than the land itself.
When the momentum is no longer with them, and they are on the wrong side of issues, Marxists rant about oppression and betrayal while doubling down on the failed policies that have brought about misery and political rejection.
Far from the EFF being “a historical necessity,” as Malema insists, its violent, racist, 1980s-type struggle demagoguery is actually a historical anachronism in post-apartheid South Africa.
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