Julius Malema is a real political chameleon. There are times when he has skirted perilously close to outright fascism and times when he has sounded like a liberal Constitutionalist. But at heart he is an authoritarian populist and an ethnic entrepreneur.
Prior to the breakdown in his relationship with Zuma, he was a central player in bringing Zuma to power. He has a history of complicity with forces who wreaked much damage on our country.
Malema has often made outrageous and deeply right wing statements, particularly on matters relating to gender. He has also regularly made statements that are simply a matter of bigotry, rather than anti-racist. He has conducted himself in a highly authoritarian manner with regard to the media, part of the lifeblood of democracy.
Malema, and the EFF as a whole, do not engage in democratic forms of debate. As Steven Friedman recently noted, the party tends to respond to criticism with insult and character assassination rather than debate.
The EFF has enjoyed very little support in Durban and some of the people who have joined the party in this city are very dubious.
In this context it was a bold move for the EFF to stage a rally at Curries Fountain. However, Malema did not use the occasion to take his audience into a progressive position.
Instead of denouncing exploitation in general he denounced exploitation by Indian bosses. Instead of denouncing the intersection of capital and politics, he denounced the intersection of Indian capital and politics. This is the classic logic of fascism. If we replace “Africans” with “Germans” and “Indians” with “Jews” this quickly becomes clear.
We must make no mistake, there is real racism within the Indian community. There has also been a long-term project by some Indian intellectuals and politicians to deny this. The fact that many Indians played a committed role in the anti-apartheid struggle has often been misused to paint all Indians as committed anti-racists.
However, to present the problems of class and capital as if they were particularly Indian issues is outrageous. Bosses of all races exploit their workers. Capitalists of all races try to use their wealth to win influence over the state.
The EFF has relatively minor electoral support. Most South Africans refuse its authoritarianism and chauvinism. However, it does have huge media attention. The reason for this is that the media, all in a desperate hunt for “clicks”, is attracted to sensationalism. But this hunt for “clicks” amplifies the space given to demagogues and is part of the reason why Trump won the American presidency.
It is vital that our media commit to democratic principles and to serious analysis and critique. Richard Poplak of the Daily Maverick has rightly been described as offering reportage of the EFF that is “amoral”. He writes as if the spectacle of Malema’s demagoguery, sometimes Constitutionalist and sometimes skirting fascism, is a kind of entertainment. But people like Malema, or Trump, are political actors and need to be engaged as such.
In both cases Malema and Trump speak to real grievances and real pain. But they both do so via demagoguery that scapegoats minorities instead of addressing structural issues that cause social suffering.
At the moment there is no genuine progressive alternative for voters. The DA is pro-business, neo-liberal and unable to tackle racism head-on. The ANC, in large part, is captured by a form of corrupt nationalism. The EFF offers an authoritarian populism as an alternative, one that is often complicit with dangerous chauvinism.
Curries Fountain is where Cosatu was launched in 1985. It is where activists, like Strini Moodley and Saths Cooper, worked with others to hold the famous pro-Frelimi rally in 1974. It is a place with a political history of Indians and Africans standing together against colonialism and apartheid.
If we remain on the capitalist road, more demagogues and opportunists will arise to exploit the crisis for their own interests. The only real road out of our crisis is a genuine path to socialism, to economic democracy.