Though Malema was sure of a win at Midrand the following week, he still didn’t want a repeat of what had happened at Mbombela. So he spoke to (Lebogang) Maile the day before the conference got under way and asked that he call for discipline among his own supporters when he addressed them, as the host chairman, in his welcome speech. Maile agreed and said what Malema had wanted to hear.
But Malema still did not rest assured. He was well aware that Maile’s people were on the ground, horse-trading throughout the night, trying to get the required 30 percent on-side.
Though they had good numbers in many provinces, they were putting all their hope in the Eastern Cape, from where some 900 delegates had travelled. All told, they alone accounted for about 17 percent of voting delegates.
What was also in Maile’s favour was the fact that the chairman of the Eastern Cape, Ayanda Matiti, was hoping for the position of secretary-general, but Malema had not included him on his slate. For the first time since political parties were unbanned in 1990, the area that is considered an ANC stronghold would not feature in the leadership team. But Malema was not going to budge… He had told Matiti as much a week earlier. Hence Maile’s men were busy trying to gain ground.
By the time Friday morning dawned, the day the nominations would take place, the Eastern Cape had decided to swing with Maile, but the provincial leadership would not come out and pronounce on it publicly. It was agreed that the regional leadership would do it instead. But Maile was not convinced. He needed to hear it from Matiti himself. And that was not forthcoming.
Then at about 2.30pm, one of the members of Malema’s NEC phoned one of Maile’s men.
“Malema wants to do a deal,” he told him. “Maile as deputy.”
Fikile Mbalula was behind the call, Maile’s man was told.
I was there when the call came through. Maile’s camp had stationed themselves at the Total garage that is within spitting distance of Gallagher and I had touched base with them a couple of times that day to try to understand the direction in which their campaign was headed.
“Tell them we want a firm offer on the table,” Maile’s man responded. “And we want to get into a meeting, with five from Maile’s side and five from Malema’s side present. Otherwise no deal.”
But that was the end of the offer. No further contact was made that day. And there is still no knowing how real that offer was, or whether it was simply Malema’s men testing the strength of Maile’s resolve.
Yet throughout that afternoon, Maile’s camp was feeling strong, adamant that they had gathered sufficient numbers to meet the 30 percent threshold.
At about 7pm they were scheduled to go back inside the venue and begin the process of nominations. At 5pm, it still looked as if Malema had a challenger on his hands.
But by 6pm the picture began to blur. Delegates from the various provinces had gathered in different locations on the grounds of Gallagher, to “caucus” as they say in ANC jargon.
It was a moment when each provincial leader would have rallied his members behind an agreed nomination; in most, if not all, cases behind “Malema for president”.
But it was what happened within the Limpopo camp that made me realise Maile would not make it. Though Maile’s support base wasn’t enormous, not even significant, in Limpopo, Malema’s home province, it did exist in numbers large enough to make a difference.
Limpopo has grown its ANCYL membership base in recent years and is now among the top three provinces in terms of numbers. Of the 900 or so delegates who had travelled to Midrand, it was estimated that a couple of hundred were prepared to jump ship.
Yet when they were assembled with their provincial peers and leaders that evening “caucusing”, they froze.
A call was put through to one of them to get them to leave the Limpopo group and meet the other Maile supporters who were beginning to assemble elsewhere on the centre’s grounds.
But they couldn’t do it. They had become afraid. And it was clear then that if they were afraid to walk away from their group in an open car park, there was no chance that they would dare put their hands up and vote against Malema, their home chief, in front of him…
I believe Maile may have read the situation in a similar light because as soon as the nominations began that evening, he opted out of the race.
But not before Matiti had decided to show his hand. He put a call through to Maile at the eleventh hour, while all 5 500 delegates were assembled back inside that hall. Maile refuses to confirm or deny that Matiti tried to reach out to him.
Hence it’s hard to know what Matiti might have wanted to say, if anything at all. But if it was an attempt to tell Maile that he was on his side, the shrewd Gautenger was not going to entertain it. It was too late to gamble and he was not a risk-taker.
At 32, Maile is young but he has his head on his shoulders. He… says little and plays his cards close to his chest.
His silence was often misinterpreted in the run-up to June 17, with many believing his lacklustre approach to the race discounted him from the outset.
In reality, he was taking on the biggest heavyweight of them all and he was considering his options carefully. He had everything to lose and little to gain. And it was a commendable move on his part even to contemplate it at all.
He, too, knew he could not win. He said he was doing it to make a point, to hold up a mirror to Malema. But he was waiting to see if the numbers were there to make it on to the ballot paper. If they were, it would then have become less about him and more about the estimated 1 800 or so who allegedly wanted change.
They were nowhere near the 50 percent that would have been required to wipe out the incumbent.
Yet they would still have been large enough in numbers to register a fact that Malema would never be able to forget: his popularity was not so secure after all.
So while they wouldn’t have changed Malema’s fate, they would have become the 30 percent he could never claim as his own, the one-third whom he would never be able to tuck under his wing. And the consequences of that further down the line could have been telling.
But it didn’t happen like that. Maile read the situation as best he could and declined the nomination that was made in his name.
And, with those few words the game was over. Malema was re-elected for a second term. And the rest is history.
When the conference ended two days later, and Malema was embarking on his second term, he delivered a closing address to the conference delegates that sent a shiver throughout the country as chilling as the “kill for Zuma” words he uttered when he started out on his first term in 2008.
He was about to put that trying first term behind him, but as is usual at the end of anything or any era, one thinks about the beginning to understand the point at which one has arrived.
He bared his soul as he harped on about the time he was disciplined by President Jacob Zuma and other party leaders a year earlier when they tried to banish him to the ends of the Earth as punishment for his radical behaviour.
At that time, one or some on that committee had suggested that Malema be sent to Cuba or China to teach him a lesson in political life. Like the parents who can no longer control the troublesome teenager, they wanted to ship him off to some far-away place in the hope that someone else could do what they could not. It was a daft move on their part.
And Malema, now fit and in fighting mode, was about to remind them why.
“You subscribe to the policy of ‘kill them young and destroy their future’,” he said. “The youth of the ANC have spoken. We defeated you. We will never appoint and elect factionalist leaders.”
He was all but telling Zuma “I’m sorry, Mr President. I don’t dance.”
He was drawing a line in the sand. It was time for revenge now.
And that revenge wouldn’t stop with Zuma but would be directed at white South Africa and the larger establishment.
Malema delved into his back catalogue of political messages and gave his audience a strong shot of revolutionary morphine. In his address, he called for everything he had pushed for in his first three years: nationalisation of the country’s assets; a radical redistribution of the land, without compensation if needs be; and an ANC led by younger cadres.
And it was also in that closing speech that he identified his ultimate goal: control of the ANC.
Though he spoke for more than an hour, off the cuff, it was in one mouthful, and in a terrifying tone, that he said it all: “Comrades, there must never be a meeting of the ANC if young people don’t constitute 50 percent-plus [of those present] if we want to change this ANC.
“And by the way, we are not going to win the ANC over through speaking here at Gallagher. We must go to the ground. We are going to war, comrades, a war for radical policy shift.”
Malema’s second term had just begun and his new enemies were now clearly identified.
* An Inconvenient Youth: Julius Malema and the ‘new’ ANC by Fiona Forde is published by Picador Africa and available at all good bookstores at a recommended retail price of R150.