By Nco Dube
ANCYL President Julius Malema and company have the ANC exactly where they want it to be. That is, have the ANC mete out the harshest punishment possible. To their credit, I’m sure the ANC itself knows exactly where Malema wants it to be.
It has become clear that Malema never bargained on President Jacob Zuma asserting his authority and having him hauled in front of a disciplinary committee. Clearly, Malema didn’t understand the game of brinksmanship that Zuma had so mastered against President Thabo Mbeki.
Malema seemed to have adopted the same modus operandi that Zuma employed in his fight against Mbeki but he missed one point. That both Mbeki and Zuma seemed to know how far to push and when to back down.
Malema is simply a novice who thought he could cut and paste the Polokwane tactics into the Mangaung fight.
What he didn’t bargain on was that Zuma would be emphatic in his response. Zuma has far more to lose than Mbeki had back in Polokwane. Mbeki was only fighting for Luthuli House while Zuma is fighting for both Luthuli House and the Union Buildings.
What makes Zuma even more dangerous is that there is always a chance that fraud and corruption charges against him could be reinstated if he loses control of the party and the state.
Malema and his backers don’t seem to have factored in those dynamics when they decided it was time Zuma was replaced.
So when the response from Zuma became clearly devastating to the Malema fronted campaign, the wheels started to come off. Backers started asking themselves if Malema was the right man to spearhead their campaign.
Malema is now left on his own with his ANCYL peers to fight off the Zuma onslaught. Remember that Zuma almost learnt the hard way that you don’t leave a dead snake lying around; you finish it off by burning it and scattering the ashes in the sea!
When it became apparent that Zuma would be taking no prisoners, the strategy was to force him to play his harshest hand when dealing with Malema and his peers who then spin such harsh actions as actions against the YL as a whole.
Zuma would appear to be fighting the Youth League for its calls for nationalisation. Genius!
Only, it is too risky.
From the onset of the DC process, the writing was on the wall for Julius. He stood no chance. So he had to get the DC to mete out the harshest sanction. Hence the continuous barrage of insults hurled against Zuma and his supporters, Chairperson of the ANC National Disciplinary Committee Chairperson and the NDC as a whole. Lately, we have seen ANCYL Spokesperson, Floyd Shivambu who is charged with Malema, fire a salvo at NDCA Chairperson, Cyril Ramaphosa.
All the threats to defy the ANC if Malema is expelled and the assertions that the YL is ‘independent’ of the ANC are designed to force the ANC to act against the whole YL NEC.
We all view this as madness and ill-discipline by desperate individuals on their way out of the ANC. We couldn’t be more wrong.
This is a strategy as I have said, designed to draw the ANC to deal with them harshly so they appear as victims.
Let us break this down. If Malema’s expulsion is upheld by Ramaphosa’s NDCA, then Malema can hope for a review by the ANC NEC but Zuma seems to have a firm grip on the NEC and Malema doesn’t seem to stand a chance.
Most importantly, he has an option to have someone raise his issue from the floor at the national conference in Mangaung in December. That is where the bets are! He is hoping that he can keep his momentum going until then and then appeal to the emotions of the branch delegates at Mangaung to vote for him to be reinstated.
For him to appeal to those emotions he has to appear the victim. He has to be paraded in Mangaung as badly wounded “economic freedom fighter” who was expelled for articulating the ‘policies’ of the Youth League.
The tricky part for him though is that his fight to remain in the ANC was never in the original plan to oust Zuma so he might lose backers who simply want to concentrate on ousting Zuma and ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe and replace them with Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula respectively.
Could the fight to keep Malema in the ANC be bigger than the fight to replace Zuma? I doubt it.
The Malema Soap Opera
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2 responses to “The Malema Soap Opera”
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Congratulations on a good piece, although I must say through the process of navigating my way through it, I was met with a cloud of confusion. Firstly you refer to Malema as “simply a novice who thought he could cut and paste the Polokwane tactics into the Mangaung fight”. And then you go on to give the same Malema far too much credit for strategically plotting Zuma’s downfall to the T using if possible even his own expulsion and every disciplinary action that the ANCDC and NDCA have taken against him to accomplish this.
While you’re at it, you then go on to claim that “Malema and his backers don’t seem to have factored in those dynamics when they decided it was time Zuma was replaced.
So when the response from Zuma became clearly devastating to the Malema fronted campaign, the wheels started to come off. Backers started asking themselves if Malema was the right man to spearhead their campaign.” My question then becomes, which is it? Is this all part of Malema’s plot or is it not? Did he count on all this happening to him and then use it to his advantage or did it catch him by surprise as it did the rest of us?Personally, having listened to the grounds for appeal that the big 4 Malema, Shivambu, Magaqa and Lamola had managed to accumulate to the NCDA earlier this year when Ramaphosa read them out for the nation to hear, I can assure you that you’re giving them far too much credit. These idiots dont understand the slightest detail of ANC constition. Some of the things they had raised as grounds for appeal were down right ridiculous and as Ramaphosa himself put it “absurd in the extreme”. Furthermore, if Lamola’s recent statements are anything to go by, the brother has’nt got two brain cells to rub together. For example, he insists that the ANC havent notified him of their decision to dismiss Malema and as a result as far as he’s concerned, Malema is still very much his president. Where in the ANC constitution does it say that the ANC has to notify anybody of their decision to discipline a member other than the person in question?
As a result I sincerely doubt that they would be capeable of plotting everything you’re praising them for. They’re just little schoolboys who were playing with explosive dynamite until it unexpectedly went off in their faces, now they’re left to nurse they’re bruised egos.
In closing, I doubt that the ANCDC and the NDCA are puppets of Zuma as much as your article seems to suggest. I think the decisions taken by these bodies against Malema are favourable to Zuma but I dont think he in any way influenced them. Malema himself is the architect of his own downfall and he’s been slowly but surely crafting his demise from the time he first burst into the scene hurling insults at Thabo Mbeki.
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Mr Dube, you make mention that Zuma needs to hold on to power in order to ensure that corruption charges on him do net get re instated. Sooner or later, Zuma will have to relinquish power whether he likes it or not. My question is, how will he keep his leash on this once he lives office?
The Social Commentator 
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