After watching this interview I have changed my perception of Julius Malema. I used to think he was an idiot who only got people to follow him by talking like Robin Hood. Now I think he is a smart tactician who learns from his mistakes, and gets people to follow him by talking like Robin Hood.
His responses to the interviewer seem very well reasoned and articulated. He seems to have progressed considerably from the days of Bloody Agent!
It scares me to think that more than 6% of SA voters support him, and by extension, support the idea of land grabs as in Zimbabwe.
Malema has grown into a smart polished politician and represents a serious threat to Southern Africa
I’m not worried - more than 6% of people no doubt believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, too.
Malema is a useful idiot for the ANC to have, but he’s never going to be the official opposition and isn’t a serious threat.
I guess the question is, will the ANC continue to shed supporters and if they do, are those supporters likely to be attracted to the EFF rather than the DA?
My thinking is that EFF has attracted its quota. Not sure if there’s much room for growth there, once their base realises they’ve not actually got the legs to deliver on anything.
It’s a mistake to think land reform has to end up where it got Zimbabwe. There are plenty of countries where land reform was done quite successfully- Hungary and Cuba on the socialist side, Taiwan and certain Latin American countries on the capitalist side, ended up doing it fairly well (i.e. without economic collapse or major bloodshed. I don’t know much about South Africa beyond the broadest demographic and economic data that anyone can look up, but South Africa isn’t Zimbabwe, Malema (whatever you think of him) isn’t Mugabe, and beyond the fact that they’re next door neighbors, what happens in one isn’t necessarily either a guideline or a warning for what happens in the other.
From their website:
The EFF’s approach to land expropriation without occupation is that all land should be transferred to the ownership and custodianship of the state in a similar way that all mineral and petroleum resources were transferred to the ownership and custodianship of the state through the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) of 2002. The state should, through its legislative capacity transfer all land to the state, which will administer and use land for sustainable-development purposes. This transfer should happen without compensation, and should apply to all South Africans, black and white