Do not fret, Juju, your time to moonwalk will come

Dear Mr Malema,

I was looking forward to carrying you shoulder-high in triumph, just as we once carried an ANC comrade to the gates of that other state institution. You may remember. It had to do with some little matter of buying a luxury vehicle. He later headed up the ANC’s integrity committee – an obvious choice.

I offer this story as encouragement that you can’t keep a good comrade down. Your time will come. A decade from now, two decades, but come it will.

I was initially dismayed at your bollock…, sorry, slight setback at the polls. After all, a knowledgeable person tweeted: “The EFF is the ONLY organisation thinking innovatively about a REAL transition towards equality and economic development.”

As if to underline the words of the oracle, the next tweet reported a knock-down, drag-out brawl at an eThekwini council meeting. Your councillors participated with great gusto (if not quite matching fighting skill – a bit disappointing for an outfit in whose name the word “Fighters” features prominently).

I like your approach to “thinking innovatively about a real transition towards equality and economic development”. Nothing like split lips, cut cheeks and bleeding noses to speed transformation along.

At any rate, it certainly doesn’t get more innovative than a good ol’ skop, skiet en donner in the council chambers. Now why didn’t we think of that before? I’m convinced that the poor and the disadvantaged would have been impressed, inspired and in deeper doo-… oops, sorry, it’s the damned autocorrect.

Add to that, the superior logic of which Floyd (he of the beautiful mind) spoke so feelingly, and it’s a mystery that you did not sweep all before you.

Of course, the superior logic claim is a little difficult to prove or disprove, as much of your interaction in various chambers has been of the nonverbal, tactile variety.

One would have to review the videos very carefully. Was a klap just then a more logical option than a kick? Would an encircling move, à la Shaka’s “horns of the ox”, have been more effective than a full frontal attack?

You yourself, sir, have shown flashes of brilliance in the sphere of mental dexterity. You once said that you were willing to kill for Zuma, then edited that to “die for Zuma”. Unlike your many detractors, I know that there is a logical explanation for this seeming flip-flop. You omitted the word “myself”, as in “kill myself”. Even Neil Armstrong, in a similarly dramatic moment, omitted an indefinite article, which changed the meaning of his historic announcement.

As a matter of interest, would you still, in the words of a sweet love song, catch a grenade for him? Or is it just down to cosy chats over Earl Grey and Romany Creams?

EFF superior logic has been much in evidence on social media. Mr Mpofu, with laser-like precision, identified the cursed root cause of all our problems: “On this day 6 April 1652 all the problems of the southern tip of our beloved continent started…”

I always knew deep in my heart that we couldn’t possibly be responsible for the horrific violence, the crime, the corruption, the incompetent bumbling and clowning. Those 1652 devils made us do it. Prior to their arrival (curse the day), this land was a veritable Garden of Eden, minus snake.

Now, in the place of Ubuntu, the Ubunja philosophy reigns, namely: I am a thief/fraud/thug because of 1652. Superior reasoning at its South African best.

Then there was Mr Ndlozi, who, in the thoughtful, measured way of the academic, reacted to the burning of Parliament with, “Whatever the cause! Whatever the intentions: IT IS A BEAUTIFUL FIRE”.

That’s the beauty of having MPs with PhDs. What would we do without our intellectuals? Less educated persons might have thought it a costly disaster, but there’s the value of a good education.

Your ground forces have also surprised and delighted us from time to time with witty, erudite observations. Perhaps taking his cue from our learned Mr Ndlozi, one member tweeted that everything (including animals) should be burned so that the land can be reclaimed. I think he meant the ash.

In the considered opinion of another, Afrikaans is a useless language. I’m sure that dismayed former speakers of the language are abandoning it in droves and turning to Gujarati and Mandarin. Yet another linguistics expert went further to declare it a satanic language. Who can argue with those versed in theology of the diabolical?

Your record in the good fight for upliftment of the man in the street and on the sidewalk speaks for itself. Who can forget such bold, innovative initiatives as this one: “The ANC-led eThekwini municipality wasted R500,000 in 40 minutes after ‘sabotaging’ a special council meeting it had called to elect a new deputy mayor on Thursday.”

The report in Daily Maverick inspired a friend to say that, as you continue in this vein in the valiant struggle against white monopoly capital, Stratcom and Van Riebeeck, the poor shall be disadvantaged no more. They will be f****d instead.

On the evidence of all that superior logic on display and the inspired approach to tackling South Africa’s many problems, in a normal country you would have cruised in (nicely) as Trump, and before him, the little moustachioed Austrian did. I suppose it’s a case of “a prophet is not without honour, except in his own country”.

You did say, according to the Daily Sun: “I’m not a regional leader. I’m international. I can walk into any country, you’ll think Michael Jackson, the showstopper has arrived in the whole continent.”

Your moonwalking, dexterous flips and crotch grabbing are certainly very Jackson. You did tell parliamentarians that you have them by the scrotum.

Your own country’s news media have not been kind to you. You once  reportedly complained that eNCA distorted images of you, making you appear darker than you are. And there was I, thinking that that was how you actually looked. Is there no limit to the cunning and depravity of the media? They probably also tried to make you look fatter and shorter than you are.

Adding insult to injury was the journalist who called you a “p**s”. I wasn’t familiar with the word. I had a sheltered upbringing (people at the shelter spoke only English). The Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries were no help. I assumed, from the similarity in spelling and pronunciation, that he was calling you a pussycat. An outrage! That’s like calling a tiger a domestic tabby.

Someone once suggested, on X, that Mr Shivambu should sue Pauli van Wyk for “deformation” of character. I thought, initially, that that was an understandable spelling error. Then the chilling truth struck me like a punch in a parliamentary scuffle. What demonic powers do these journalists wield?

Someone else suggested that Mr Shivambu is entirely responsible for any character deformation he has undergone. I would also, as you did, ban such journalists from my press briefings. I trust only the Daily Sun. A tokoloshe, after all, is a tokoloshe, is a tokoloshe. No room for fake news or bias there.

Then there are your many (clearly white-tendencied) critics on social media. One of your razor-sharp members admonished: “Twitter should bar racist fools and perverts from tagging the CiC’s account!! because whenever they are bored from their lives characterised by denial of old fast approaching old age, erectile dysfunction and permanent sexual fantasies and they just tag CiC for attention.”

Very perceptive of that commentator to deduce all that murky stuff from assorted tweets. Yes, one can well imagine that some bugger, in the thrall of perversion, permanent sexual fantasies and the other stuff, would look up from whatever perverse thing he or she was doing and exclaim: “I know what! I’m going to tag the CIC’s account. Ooh, the ultimate thrill. Pant, moan, gasp!”

How well you know these perverse, racist types. One thing puzzles. If they have permanent sexual fantasies, could they be bored as well? Perhaps they have boring fantasies. You would know about that sort of thing.

Mr Malema, all is not lost – just most of it. I look forward, still, to the day when you call Kamala Harris on the presidential hotline: “Ms Harris, I am calling about preferential trade treatment for South Africa.”

“That’s an important issue, Mr Malema. Please, do go on.”

“You have no choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because I have you by the...” Long pause.

“Mr Malema?”

“Er, Ms Harris, I’ll call you back. Floyd, Mbuyiseni!”

Yours in the struggle for justice, reparations, a united Africa and some land, Richard. DM

Richard J Mann is the author of five satirical books on politics in SA.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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