Youth leader found guilty of sowing divisions and bringing the party into disrepute by disciplinary committee.

So says the headlines. But, why did they do it?

He certainly was divisive, and disreputable.

But, the ANC are a political party, so there are no principles involved. Only power issues.

Are they, the party, scared? They seem to be having trouble at the polls. Toilets, and inability to deliver reform and development. Promises not fulfilled.

Are they scared of a new DA, with a black (it has had a woman before) as it’s head? It takes all the coloured vote (which is significant, as opposed to the white vote), and keeps taking the Cape Provinces.

Do they feel race (and he is a racist) is something they need to keep swept under the carpet? Is the race card something they cannot afford to play anymore? Do they feel they have to actually put together a policy that is logical, and practical, and real? Do they feel they have to keep the radicals to the fringe, as a thing of influence, a tendency, but not mainline policy? They have been a party for 99 years, so they are far more mature than most ‘revolutionary’ parties, and now they take into account the historical fact that revolutionaries do not make good administrators. Are they showing themselves to be a ‘party’ in the classical sense – the role of a political party is interest articulation and aggregation, and they acknowledge that Malema does not aggregate enough interest for the party to articulate?

And why is he, a ‘youth’ leader at the age of 30? Surely he is mature enough (even if he is still writing university exams).

This entry was posted on November 11th, 2011 at 1:02 pm by Michael Laban and is filed under Governance, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.