RIVER JORDAN FOR ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS EFF OF JULIUS MALEMA

1.       Now Julius Malema, South Africa’s political wunderkind has done it again, galvanizing our political scene with his neonate Herculean, the EFF or Economic Freedom Fighters!

Who on earth wants to have no truck with money or the joys it brings with it?

I declare: We must follow Julius Malema’s new pathway, if not with our hands carrying membership cards, at least with our eyes open for it sure will make a dent in whatever super-shape (if 'more mature') South African politicians had ever dreamt post-Apartheid South Africa dreamt of!

2.       Because of the money element that goes with it, ‘Economic Freedom Fighting’ evokes all kinds of powerful emotions to all kinds of people from all corners of the globe, to say nothing of South African natives like I!

I mean, if I were a professional bank robber I would right now be considering changing careers to politics and the EFF would be my first port of call for membership!

3.       However, do not be misled into thinking Malema’s brainchild appeals to the lumpenproletariat (your scum of the earth who declare ‘I should rather die trying to be rich robbing a bank than cower under a life of perpetual poverty’)…no not at all!  Never you believe either that Malema is making waves only within the confines of the Limpopo River up north and down south at the confluence of the Indian and Atlantic oceans, NO!!!

4.       Maybe you are already asking: “What then is the jive, Mr Phiri?”

5.       The reality here (and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters must themselves note it if they would dislike any notion of growing willy-nilly into a Frankenstein, polecat or maybe a mere object of derision with their leaders rotting in some jail for this or other crime against humanity) is, South Africa and indeed, the entire African continent, IS CONTESTED TERRITORY FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.

6.       No, we did not choose that fate as Africans and for that matter ask President Robert Mugabe up north our Zimbabwean neighbour whose it is the story of his life ito parry a meddlesome world particularly the powerful British and its Europeanized former colonies like Australia!

7.       If we did not choose that fate, still the fate chose us!

8.       This is for the mere reason that, in terms of mineral resources, Africa  is not only the world’s richest continent… and I am sure you have already heard in the corridors of power about what geologists seem to be suggesting as a dream subterranean gold chain of mountains stretching from South Africa up till around Zambia only still too deep for present-day technology to mine…

9.       And so, Mr Malema, everybody on earth wants that Economic Freedom Fighting leeway in order to have a piece of that gold, other mineral and natural resources of this region.

10.   There is also the element that South Africa is the cradle of humankind (most  probably because of the abundance of gold and I personally theorize that the very presence of gold on our shores had something to do with the origin of all life, if not mammalian life where us humans fit for South Africans have observed how cattle grow better and fatter where gold abounds in areas like Mpumalanga’s Sheba Gold Mine and folklore has it the original owner of that piece of land (one Mr Shiba Mkhwanazi and before the white man usurped his land to do mining on it, used gold nuggets for the purpose of camping his herds in order to make the stock healthier).

11.   If half of this be true (that all homo sapiens originate from our shores and that minerals are somehow attached to the very make-up of our bodies and souls) THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN STOP SO-CALLED FOREIGNERS MAKING AN ECONOMIC FOOTHOLD IN AFRICA.  Best you can do is to control it.  And to control it you need brains and not brawns burnished by state power in the futuristic Malema-run Republic of South Africa.

12.   And even before you get those brains sharpened enough to run a state that gives Africans the desired economic freedom, you must be broad-minded enough to consider formerly-enslaved Africans who are not only still resident in those countries of former servitude, but are today desirous of coming back home to South Africa with many of them millionaires in their own right, to say nothing of the expertise that they want  to bring back here to build this awakening giant called Africa.

13.   Indeed, I doubt if there is any human being on the face of the earth resident on a continent other than his own, will miss his motherland more than an African on the diaspora will.

14.   I mean, I know of ethnic Europeans who are at home to be called Africans and do live the African way, except of course the technology does not exist yet to change themselves black in skin colour and re-texturize their hair and eye colours (although they are constitutionally allowed in South Africa today to give themselves native African surnames like Phiri, Mokoena, Zuma, Mugabe and Dlamini).  I know of Asians too who feel absolutely at home in South Africa or Tanzania.

15.   I have met other races too on this Continent who behave as mentioned. 

16.   Talking of which, I am still to meet somebody considered as ‘pure African’ as Phiri talking more passionately of Africa more than the naturalized African say from England or India will!  Problems is: when the looks of the talker hit your eye as Phiri, you are tempted to perhaps mistakenly  retort: “Liar! White Pretender! Patronizing Settler!”

17.   Therefore, to bring economic freedom to South Africans, to the native South African in particular (which is where the EFF philosophy lies I surmise), takes us back to a definition of who the native African is in South Africa? AND THAT IS THE HEADACHE JULIUS MALEMA MUST FIRST CURE, before liberating these people…US THE PEOPLE.

18.   I metaphorically mean, I cannot as a doctor curing people of melanin loss get into any hospital ward and start injecting anybody who looks pale.  I NEED TO FIRST IDENTIFY THE PARTICULAR PATIENT for indeed other patients are in the hospitals for some ailments other than melanin loss and for them it may be natural to have minimal melanin since the regions of the earth that created them cannot support and revitalize any human with clouds of melanin that my particular patient from equatorial Africa needs to protect himself from too much sun.

19.   But back to real examples, is a black man in New York who FEELS he is a descendant of Zulus and wants to emigrate to a South Africa ruled by President Julius Malema going to feel at home back in South Africa or is he going to be treated as a ‘foreigner’ for having been away from Africa for six generations?

20.   Is a South African white man with a Khoi, Pedi, or Zulu ancestor whose colour has in his own 21^st-century generation paled… going to be treated as a foreigner in Julius Malema’s South Africa JUST BECAUSE HE LOOKS AS WHITE AS ANY OTHER WHITE MAN IN AMSTERDAM, LONDON OR MOSCOW?  And is there one Afrikaaner (white or brown South African of mainly African-Dutch-German-French stock) stand up and swear he is sure there is no single black ancestry in his blood line stretching back to 1652 when the first European settler set foot on our shores?

21.   Many people reading this post may think these are petty questions on the part of blog author.  They may think to tell an African from a non-African is a simple and straightforward matter, but I DECLARE THERE IS NOTHING MORE DIFFICULT IN THE WORLD!

22.   This racial conundrum, then, is exactly where Julius Malema will win or lose his economic freedom fight even before he starts it i.e. IF HE FAILS OR SUCCEEDS IN TELLING A MODERN-DAY AFRICAN FROM A MODERN-DAY NON-AFRICAN.

23.   Indeed, the politics of simplicisms led by simpletons is over.  The buffoonery of taking generalizations for politics has had its day and appetite for it has dissipated.

24.   People in this day and age LIVE THEIR LIVES AS PASSIONATE INDIVIDUALS WHO WANT THEIR PASSIONS TO BE RESPECTED BY POLITICAL LEADERS IF INDEED SUCH LEADERS MUST GET THEIR SUPPORT. No one is going to allow himself or herself to be herded like a cow towards some monolithic idea without any fine-tuning mechanisms to cater for nuances, idiosyncrasies and styles of individuals who even though they like politics they demand politics to like them back in return for who they are as individuals.

25.   Lastly, for you, Mr Malema: remember that property is a function of human life, and not the other way round.  You can take from the rich and give to the poor, which is good; but the following day the poor will be poor once again and the rich, rich BECAUSE IT IS ALL IN THE INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE’S 1. PASSIONS, 2.MINDSET, 3.CLARITY OF PURPOSE AND 4.MENTAL LIBERATION (This is also the point that Independent Political Analyst Prince Mashele was making in your famous, if zesty, discussion over your EFF  on TV the other day, Mr Malema, Sir)

26.   Those four (and I am sure there are many more any reader can think of) I just sucked them off my thumb, but you will succeed in achieving nothing in South Africa except more ethnic hatred, more racism, more poverty and strife UNLESS YOU CAN TAKE THOSE ABOVEMENTIONED FOUR AND OTHERS AS A TEMPLATE TO:

a.       Put over Phiri and other residents of Mamelodi (e.g.) in Pretoria and see how we measure up to them; do the same to residents of Oranje, for example (of whom I read dream a puritan Boerestaat for the Boer or Afrikaaner), and to all other stake-holders in the disparate passions of Africanness.

b.      See where each grouping of ‘Africans’ excels, why it excels and how you can as a Malema government take that example to other groupings with a dearth of the same talent.

c.       See how you, in your present-day EFF ideology incorporate those future plans, which are of course plans of working primarily with the minds of the South African people and only secndarily with their pockets  because, Mr Malema, hate though I do to tell you this obvious fact…BUT money comes from the minds of individuals and not the other way round.

27.   And that will be the River Jordan to the success of The Economic Freedom Fighters-EFF.

28.   Good luck Sirs, Mesdames and Comrades of the EFF!

29.   Good luck,Mr Malema; and I am sure you are mature enough to handle this onerous task you have given unto yourself; you are tried and tested enough to manoeuvre through the political path you have chosen.  It is a shining path, like the gold you promise to even the humblest of South Africans.  They rightly deserve it, for it is the gold their ancestors and God himself bequeathed unto them and us since Creation!!