INLSA

WISE WORDS: Julius Malema may find out that the real world is brutal, and may well remember the words of party deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe, right, who told him, just over a year ago, to watch his mouth and his actions, says the writer. Picture: Bongiwe Mchunu

‘Former ANC Youth League president Julius Malema”. That is going to take some getting used to. “Suspended ANCYL president” was a new one that we got used to in the past few months. It wasn’t too difficult, after all, suspended has an air of suspension in it. Like you are hanging there, not permanent, to pass soon.

But former is something else. It is a sign of a has-been, once was, but not anymore.

And for Juju boy, it means life on the outside. Outside of inside, where you once not only were, but held centre stage.

Outside can be a bad place to be, unless you were never in, in which case outside is not really outside. It is just not inside. Real outside when you were once inside can be extremely cold. You soon discover how fickle comradely solidarity is or can be.

The crowds of hangers-on start thinning, calls come in dribs and drabs, and when you leave a message to be called back, people suddenly take inordinately long, where once they would have returned your calls immediately. But even this stage is not the worst, for a new outsider.

The crunch comes when those who used to call you are no longer doing so, tell you they will call you back when you call, because they are on another line (with somebody more important than you). And then they never call back, until you do so yourself.

Real world is brutal, Juju may find out soon. He may well remember the words of supreme wisdom given to him by ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe just over a year ago. Speaking to him in Sepedi, Motlanthe told him to watch his mouth and his actions.

“The ANC is a huge organisation and no matter how important you think you are or how people make you feel important, if you keep saying these things one day e tla go sotlha ya o lathlela kuwa kgole. (It will chew you and spit you far away)”.

What chairman of the appeals committee Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Saturday was a carefully crafted exercise of chewing and spitting. It was done with finesse: there are rules that we all bind ourselves to when we join the ANC, the rules enjoin us to behave at all times in a particular manner. Ramaphosa is good at these things: “We looked at all issues raised exhaustively,” he said.

And then the killer punch, the appeal cannot stand. But just like the Nazis who would punish their own who were found abusing people destined for the gas chamber, an air of fairness is important. Derek Hanekom, chairman of the ANC’s national disciplinary committee, was right to find you guilty but he should have heard your evidence in mitigation. So I am sending you back for that.

On the face of it, Hanekom is being rapped on the knuckles. It is called the face of a functioning and good-intentioned bureaucracy.

But at its core was the brutal decapitation of Juju. For Malema, the sentence was and is irrelevant. Once found guilty, he was gone, due to the earlier suspension. So as President Jacob Zuma would say, why beat a dead snake, five years was flogging the dead, guilty was enough.

And Ramaphosa and his committee were clear on this. The status quo needed Juju out and they have delivered the blow. And with it, the carrot of dividing the youth league leadership is dangled.

Take league secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa. What a choice he faces. Grovel to Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba publicly and thus desert Malema because if he does as demanded he can save his skin and position? Or stay with Malema in the wilderness by refusing to apologise, and then what?

Ramaphosa doesn’t make the choice for Magaqa, he wants him to make it himself. How more cruel can you get?

In the main, the case against the five was really against two of them. Juju and Floyd Shivambu. Shivambu is (was) the spokesman-cum-magazine publisher who cannot stand pesky journalists. Journalists are told, in the name of the ANC, to f-off or that they are white bitches.

In court for the same charge, Floyd can’t remember saying such things, or he possibly couldn’t have said them because they are not part of his everyday vocabulary.

A young man with a pretty good brain, it is lost in translation due to exaggerated self-importance, a sense of omnipotence, and a “can’t-touch-me” attitude. Together with Juju they saw themselves as the “It kids”. They could do and say as they wished. But as Motlanthe warned, that belief was premised on a fallacy.

What now? Who now? If I were Limpopo ANC chairman and premier, Cassel Mathale, I would be very worried and afraid. I would go back to all the nasties I have been mouthing and start the apologies now.

Beyond that I would mend my ways, if that is not too late already.

For Juju the verdict strips him of a membership he desperately needs to galvanise against Zuma. Not that it practically stops him, but he cannot do it in the name of the ANC. He has to go underground, and yet his value in pulling people is when he is above board.

Underground has dangers for those colluding with a persona non grata.

Added to this could be the other small triple issue of the Hawks, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and the taxman.

All this as Zuma consolidates for Mangaung II in December. And Juju, once described by the same Zuma as worthy of inheriting the leadership of Langalibalele Dube’s movement, will wonder what and where he went wrong.

And then ultimately the elephant in the room. What exactly is the ANC leadership game plan in slapping Malema et al? Is it the start of a clean-up campaign against bad, corrupt and corruptive elements and influences in the organisation? Or is it just an exercise of authority against the obnoxious while leaving the merely bad in?

If the answer is the latter, then mission accomplished. But if it is the former, besides Juju and his Limpopo brigade, who else is bad, corrupt and needs weeding? Can all the people remaining in the ANC leadership explain their own lifestyles and financial situations?

To be direct, by way of example, if President Zuma was only a few years ago unable to pay school fees for his own children, how is he able today to legitimately add R40 million of “personal money” to a R65m revamp budget for his Nkandla compound? Or is this not a legitimate question to ask in the circumstances?

Don’t hold your breath for answers because embedded in that question would be a fate for virtually every one of the ANC leaders. And how many of them can risk asking that question without precipitating their own destiny with Juju’s fate?