Open letter to Julius Malema

BROTHER Malema, I hope this letter finds you, your friends and family along with the leadership and rank and file of the Economic Freedom Fighters in good health and spirits. The purpose of this communication is to address your recent attack on President Mugabe, which, based on the strategic target, guaranteed frontpage newspaper headlines.

The fact that you called on President Mugabe to step down, highlighting his age as justification to be so blatantly disrespectful, shows that you know very little about him and even less about Zanu-PF and Zimbabwe.

If you have studied how President Mugabe deals with critics and detractors who regurgitate imperialist propaganda when seeking 11 minutes of fame, it should be crystal clear to you that one of his strongest attributes is being impervious to opportunist rhetoric.

If he never responded to the likes of former United States president Barack Obama, chances are he will never even mention let alone lose sleep over a puny character like you.

What you fail to wrap your head around is the dominant sentiment in Sadc that Zimbabwe can deal with its internal matters without anyone poking in their noses — whether black or pink.

There is also a consensus across progressive nations that President Mugabe is an elder statesman whose wise counsel remains of strategic importance to Africa.

Did you not read into his double-election as Sadc and African Union Chair? Did you not see that industrialisation master-stroke which links Africa to his intellectual brilliance for decades to come? Dear brother, get a grip of yourself. You claim to be leading a revolution, but fail to recognise true revolutionaries. I, for one, was grateful when you distinguished the EFF from other opposition parties like the MDC. I thought you were about economic empowerment, just like President Mugabe is.

In fact, when you began you portrayed him as a hero. What has he done to you?

You are rapidly evolving into a pup- pet, and the puppeteers are known to all. This is not you, Julius, get back to reality.

Denigrating President Mugabe endears you to white capitalists, but alienates you from your people — the Africans whose cause you claim to advocate.

When you referred to Zanu-PF members as cowards for not demanding President Mugabe’s stepping down, you showed serious ignorance of Zimbabwe’s and Southern Africa’s history.

Many of those Zanu-PF stalwarts you criticised defeated the second-most powerful colonial army ever assembled in Africa and helped Cde Samora Machel and Frelimo fight Renamo. They also helped prevent Southern Africa’s destabilisation via rebel activity in the DRC. Why would they suddenly cower?

If truth be told, you are the real coward.

You want everyone to believe that you are fearless by challenging imperialists and yet you knock on their doors at night, tail between your legs, to ask for forgiveness.

You have built your entire political career on stepping on the toes of other comrades and stabbing them in the back.

First it was President Mbeki that you fought and then President Zuma. The course you have taken, therefore, comes as no surprise.

Do you believe that putting on a red beret makes you a Thomas Sankara?

It was a good idea, though, to use the persona of a revolutionary who waged a struggle many miles away; otherwise you would have received more laughs than Trevor Noah if you had tried to convince South Africans that you are an extension of Madiba or Biko!

In closing, I pose this question to you, my brother: What is more beneficial to Sadc and the rest of Africa, Julius Malema stepping down from his pretentious podium or President Mugabe stepping down as President of Zimbabwe and leader of the African revolution?

The honest answer may really hurt your feelings. But it is an answer you must face head-on.