The Weekender | 18-19 Jul 2009

Malema’s desperate sideswipe betrays his own ignorance, writes KRISTIN PALITZA

WHERE the heck did African National Congress (ANC) Youth League president Julius Malema’s cheap comments come from last week, when he declared that charges of hate speech and discrimination brought against him by Sonke Gender Justice were motivated by a racist and imperialist desire to embarrass black leadership?

His statements may encourage already widespread support of rape, and the accusation is not consistent with the work Sonke does. Earlier this year, Sonke lodged a complaint against Malema in the Equality Court, alleging that his comments that the complainant in President Jacob Zuma’s rape trial “had a nice time” amounts to hate speech and discrimination, and contributes to already pervasive violence by men against women.

Sonke has demanded a public apology and called on Malema to pay R50000 in damages to a nongovernmental organisation providing services to survivors of domestic or sexual violence. But Malema, who admits to his statements, refuses to apologise unreservedly, saying he wants to “explain” his comments.

Now — after Malema unsuccessfully tried to settle the case out of court and it looks like he will have to face the music — he plays the race card. The case against him, he claims, is an attempt by SA’s white minority to ridicule and embarrass the ANC leadership.

“The black faces you see in front, those are not real faces, they represent the whites who are opposed to African leadership,” Malema proclaimed outside the court that postponed his case until the end of August. “The imperialists and the whites who are still representing the past are using this organisation." He vowed never to succumb to pressure by a white minority and called on “progressive forces to boycott Sonke”.

He also called Sonke a “Mickey Mouse” organisation, showing he doesn’t understand the work it does to support men to take action to create gender equality and end domestic and sexual violence.

Sonke’s work was acknowledged when co-directors Dean Peacock and Bafana Khumalo received Men’s Health magazine’s Best Man of the Year award in 2007, and when Khumalo was appointed by former president Thabo Mbeki for a second term to the Commission on Gender Equality — to give just two examples.

In true Malema-style, the minute he runs out of valid points to make, he makes sweeping and unfounded accusations about an organisation that has solid credentials and is filled with former anti-apartheid activists . Contrary to Malema’s claims, the majority of Sonke’s staff isn’t white. The board of directors is nearly three-quarters black, the management team two-thirds black and the staff 80% black.

Mbuyiselo Botha, Sonke’s senior programmes adviser who brought the action against Malema, was secretary-general of the Sharpeville Civic Association. Khumalo participated in the 1976 Soweto uprising and was involved in conflict mediation between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Peacock was a founding member of the Pupils Awareness and Action Group in the Western Cape and participated in the End Conscription Campaign before leaving the country to live in Bolivia, Nicaragua and the US, where he challenged US interventionism in Central America and the Middle East.

Sonke co-ordinator Patrick Godana was an anti-apartheid activist in the Eastern Cape township of New Brighton. He was a member of the ANC in exile and spent five years in detention. Like Botha, Godana carries physical scars from torture and police guns . Sonke’s national programme manager, Regis Mtutu, was the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Social Forum and was instrumental in bringing the first-ever World Social Forum to Africa in 2007. Thami Nkosi was recently listed by the Mail & Guardian as one of the top 300 young South Africans to take out to lunch.

The organisation’s board of directors is made up of well-known, highly qualified and greatly respected professionals — none with imperialist credentials. They include Sisonke Msimang, executive director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa; Kumi Naidoo, former Civicus secretary-general and global director of Greenpeace; Rachel Jewkes, director of the gender and health unit of the Medical Research Council; and Shamillah Wilson, founder of the Western Cape HIV/AIDS Learners Network, to name but a few.

All of them would have reason to feel strongly offended and betrayed by Malema’s accusations of being figureheads for “imperialists and whites who are still representing the past”. All South Africans should feel slighted by leaders incapable of formulating arguments based on substance and instead resort to what Botha calls “the race card”.

Mondli Makhanya got it right when he said in last week’s Sunday Times editorial that it is time the ANC reined in Malema. The party’s failure to do so raises questions about its commitment to rigorous intellectual debate, and about its longstanding commitment to a nonracial, nonsexist SA. n Palitza is a freelance journalist, editor, media consultant and trainer.