EFF’s Achilles brings the party faithful to heel with VBS cameo but who else will believe a politician with an empty wallet?

At one point, as the TV cameras zoomed in to show us a close-up of Julius Malema’s grinning face, I half expected him to shout, like Brad Pitt’s Achilles in the movie Troy: “Is there no-one else?” He was pumped up, clearly convinced that he had already delivered deadly blows to his opponents less than 30 minutes into what was scheduled to be a two-hour battle.

To their credit, the four journalists did not yield but kept on piling in with questions.

But it was always going to be a one-sided affair.

From the beginning the whole saga was like watching a movie in which Achilles marches to the gates of Troy, chooses which of its citizens he will fight and then dictates what they can use as their weapons.

Courageous as the four journalists were to stand toe-to-toe with Malema, a politician with a legendary gift of the gab, the truth is that Malema was always going to come out on top.

As any stick-fighter in the rural hinterlands of our country would know, bravery counts for very little when your opponent has a proper wooden stick and a shield, and you are armed only with a sugar-cane stalk.

At least one of the journalists conceded that they were not best qualified to interrogate the EFF leader on corruption allegations relating to VBS Mutual

Bank because they were political reporters who were not directly involved in the investigations conducted by others in the media on the issue.

They had no evidence or details about some of the things Malema is accused of.

Obviously Malema knew all of this when he invited them for his unprecedented no-holdsbarred question-and-answer session.

What did he achieve in the end? Did he not come out of the session sounding too defensive as he trotted out old conspiracy theories about the people who have sought his political demise ever since his days as ANC Youth League president?

He obviously did, especially to those who are already opposed to his politics.

But the show on Thursday was not about winning new admirers for Malema. It was about consolidating the EFF’s support base.

The VBS saga and the claims that Malema, his deputy president Floyd Shivambu and others associated with them unlawfully benefited from the looting of the bank have been unsettling for the party’s rank and file.

So what better way of boosting morale than by setting up your own “court of public opinion” with a bunch of independent journalists as your interrogators, and emerging triumphant?

In a country where, due to its dark history, being seen as a political victim helps to rally sections of the public to your defence, it is not surprising that Malema is now milking, for all it’s worth, the fact that one of the journalists asked him to unpack his wallet to show that he has no “dodgy” credit cards.

“Every slave that tried to take a stand against the slave master,” he later tweeted, “was publicly lynched for all slaves to see. I’m just a child of a deceased epileptic domestic worker and the colour of my skin makes me a suspect.”

The tweet was accompanied by a video of himself emptying out his wallet for the journalist.

His supporters, at least those on the social media platform, believed every word. “Being black is a crime, sorry my CIC [commander in chief],” wrote one.

Whether the media stunt has permanently banished all the questions in the minds of Malema’s supporters about his links to the collapse of VBS is entirely dependent on whether the Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority bring any charges against him and his associates in the future.

In recent weeks the two agencies have made tremendous progress in the matter, arresting and charging at least nine people believed to have been involved in the looting.

Whether this heralds similar action against leaders in the EFF or in the ANC and its alliance structures remains to be seen.

What is clear, though, and we have seen this in many other instances where politicians have been under investigation, is that as the probe into what happened at VBS intensifies, those who are implicated will employ every trick in the book to deflect attention from themselves.

As the media, we have a duty to report all of this, and not to take sides. But we also have to be careful not to be drawn into schemes that have little to do with informing our readers and viewers, but everything to do with serving the ends of the politicians who set them up.

Those who are implicated will employ every trick in the book to deflect attention from themselves