Malema’s politicking in name of Mama Winnie
At a time of such national mourning, the use of divisive rhetoric was dangerous
WHILE EFF leader Julius Malema’s speech at Winnie Madikizela-mandela’s funeral etched his name in history, it also exposed the dangers of using the past to upset the present.
Malema’s oratory skills rank highly in the broad liberation movement’s history, which produced figures such as Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Harry Gwala, Tsietsi Mashinini, Cheryl Carolus, Peter Mokaba, Muntu Myeza, Allan Boesak, Jay Naidoo, Socrates Makhaye and indeed Madikizela-mandela.
Malema’s charm at the funeral lay in part in his ability to present history as “the light of truth”, to use ancient Rome’s Marcus Tullius Cicero’s words. Malema told mourners he had not come “to bury Mama‚ because Queen Mothers do not die‚ they multiply into a million red flowers of love and freedom”. Instead he sought to openly write himself into history. By addressing her as “mama” and not just “comrade”, he is showing closer intimacy to her, especially, her illustrious and suddenly fashionable struggle credentials.
“I am here to pick up her spear‚ and make my vows that I will continue to fight for a mission of restoring the dignity of black people through attainment of economic freedom in our lifetime.”
Malema is telling us to see her as someone to be emulated. A model and lasting ancestor.
He defends this tragic struggle heroine while performing the mythical and gallant symbolic act of picking up Madikizela-mandela’s “fallen spear”. He evokes heroism to incite action, to paraphrase the Renaissance scholar Timothy Hampton. And it is him who is supposedly the anointed inheritor of this heroism.
“Mama‚ those who sold you out to the regime are here.” These words are potentially as chilling as those of Zulu King Dingane’s “bulalan’abathakathi/kill the wizards”. The king’s words 180 years ago, saw his army kill Voortrekker leader Piet Retief and his entourage. Relations between the coloniser and the colonised, were violent and shrouded in mistrust and betrayal. I doubt Malema seeks to shed blood nonetheless.
Yet, his acerbic political sermon is like a scene in Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar. Speaking after the assassination of Emperor Caesar, Mark Antony, who pretends to be addressing the mourners, simply as Caesar’s loyal friend, provokes an uprising.
Like Antony, Julius Malema manipulates history to introduce a new narrative in the public imagination.
But he is right to present a balanced and nuanced reading of Winnie-madikizela-mandela’s location in a history that is mainly sexist and driven by racist animosity and apartheid-era propaganda.
He reminds us that Winnie was not the only one to bloody her hands in a long and dirty political conflict.
The anti-apartheid struggle was not a picnic, as Zenani Mandela-dlamini correctly said in a tribute to her mother.
Malema and Mandela-dlamini’s narratives confirm that one of the key triggers of the ANC’S 1969 Morogoro Conference, was that combatants in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) desperately wanted to fight the apartheid state militarily and not just make it a song and dance affair. The armed struggle preoccupied the ANC for the better part of the late 1970s to the late 1980s. In the ANC’S 1985 January 8 statement for example, ANC president Oliver Tambo noted “impressive strides” in making SA “ungovernable.”
This week political scholar James Myburgh wrote that in this period the ANC’S Radio Freedom called on its supporters “to organise themselves into small units, arm themselves with whatever weapons were at hand (from Molotov cocktails to stolen guns), and go out and attack policemen and councillors and other ‘collaborators’ in their homes and elsewhere”.
Myburgh recalled that in the ANC’S publication, Sechaba in 1986, two senior leaders justified attacks on community councillors and informers. Because these were seen as part of the “enemy”. Although some individual ANC leaders also endorsed the “necklace”, which the ANC leadership officially condemned, the Western media in particular, mischievously preferred to link the barbaric “necklace” killing method to Madikizela- Mandela. In part because of her fiery validation of the “necklace” captured on camera and shown across the world.
Today it is evident that what happened then occurred under trying and complex political conditions. Madikizela-mandela erred as she sought to fight for her people’s total freedom. Hardly “a good old Maria” as ANC leader Tokyo Sexwale said, her faults are part of a people’s collective quest for their human dignity. It is possible that she might have also wrongfully labelled certain journalists as police informers.
Clearly, current debates on Winnie Madikizela-mandela’s life and times show that history is important, yet inadequate as a definitive and painless navigational tool across the often hazardous and contested seas of today’s life. History is a multifaceted and fluid rhetorical gesture. Even as we seek justice, one must not blindly and simplistically use history to jeopardise social cohesion and public good.
It is therefore unfortunate that Julius Malema manipulated history at Winnie Madikizela-mandela’s funeral to encourage conflict. It was rather cheap politicking to call fellow comrades “sell-outs” and speak in a tone that casts aspersions on their characters and political commitment. Given his popularity among South Africans, and sections of the ANC leadership, Julius Malema needs to be more prudent and appreciate that populist and divisive politics, even if captivating, are dangerous. Especially for someone who aspires to be South Africa’s president one day and can persuasively talk his way to the highest office in the beloved country.