So I sing a song of hate, Julius Malema

African political leaders have always had a difficult ride from the foreign press during their time in office. Whether it is their links to corruption, war or ineptitude then many leaders are tarred with the same brush. Last month candidate Michael Sata defeated incumbent Rupiah Banda to become Zambia’s new President, yet much of the foreign attention focussed on the fact that there had been no ethnic violence, electoral fraud or a reluctance to stand down, like we saw in Cote d’Ivoire last November. The beacon for African democracy to flourish through Western eyes is seen through the South African lens. After the years of Apartheid and South Africa’s isolation internationally to the freedom of Nelson Mandela, the rainbow nation, is the litmus paper to whether democracy is working on the continent. Yet, the man who steals all the headlines is not the current President Jacob Zuma, it is the firebrand leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) Julius Malema.

Malema a pugnacious and part of South Africa’s black ‘nouveau riche’ has gained attention for his virulent views and standpoints on politics and economics. When Malema first hit the scene, what was noticeable was his poor use of the English language, yet his ability to court controversy has made him infamous. Malema has demanded that private enterprise particularly the mining sector be confiscated and nationalised. He believes that the sizeable white minority of South Africans still control far too much of the land and this should be handed back to the poor black population, by force if necessary. At ANC rallies, he famously sang the Apartheid song ‘Shoot the Boer’, Boer being a reference to the non-indigenous white settlers, something that has seen him reprimanded for by the police and the legal system.

Approaching 100,000 followers on Twitter, he has been able to maximise his exposure to the international press, and again for the wrong reasons. In 2010, he criticised a BBC journalist Jonah Fisher after he had questioned Malema’s wealthy background and was subsequently expelled from the press conference. He has criticised the role of Chinese entrepreneurs in South Africa, and last month has said that the Botswana government should be overthrown (though no one is quite sure why). In 2010 he met Zimbabwe’s ageing tyrant Robert Mugabe and backed the land reforms that Mr Mugabe’s ZANU PF implemented in 2000, which crippled the Zimbabwean economy, he also called the opposition MDC party and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai imperialists.

For a long time, Jacob Zuma did not criticise the activities of Malema and the youth wing of the ANC. In fact, Malema told Zuma that he would ‘kill’ to ensure that he was elected as President, yet since then relations have become frostier. Zuma reprimanded Malema for many of his public comments and in return, Malema has become critical of Zuma in public, for example he did not like him backing the NATO campaign in Libya. Today, it will be decided whether Malema faces expulsion from the ANC as a whole. Many point out that Malema is insignificant and that the biggest issue for South Africa is its flagging economy and chronic corruption. Yet, for South Africa, after decades of struggle, the possibility of race becoming an issue does not bode well. The murder of the far-right leader Eugene Terreblanche in 2010 reopened some wounds that the country hoped had closed in the early 1990s. What is more concerning is that Genocide Watch, a Washington based organisation, has highlighted the dangers of Malema’s speeches and the fact the ANC has failed to remove him as leader of the ANCYL. It says that the country is at Stage 6 – preparation, stage 7 is genocide. It says, ‘Xenophobic riots and murders of foreign refugees as well as continuing hate crimes against Boer farmers and other whites have caused dark clouds to form over the rainbow nation’. Malema has been quoted as ‘Africa’s biggest racist’ and we shall see whether he can be stopped.

Racism in America: What would Atticus say?

It is 50 years this week since the publication of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Set in 1930s Alabama, it tells the story of a white family, Jem and Scout Finch and their lawyer father Atticus. In a deeply racist society, Atticus defends a young black man called Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white girl. Despite the lack of evidence and the cross-examination the all-white jury finds Tom Robinson guilty; to the despair of the onlooking Jem and Scout. The book, which sold tens of millions across the world, highlighted the inequality and injustice that existed in the supposed free world of America.

Yet, the American dream was essentially a white man’s ideal. The founding fathers believed that eventually Negroes would be repatriated back to their own homelands in Africa. As history demonstrates a bitter civil war between the North and South broke out in the 1860s, primarily over the issue of slavery. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson who pushed through the equality laws that finally ended the inequalities between white and black Americans.

Fast forward fifty years, there is now a black President in Barack Obama and for many white Americans the scary fact that in 2050 they will a minority in their original settlement. So much has changed since Mockingbird’s initial publication but to what extent do black Americans still see themselves within Thomas Jefferson’s notion of a separate nation within a nation, that is: after being treated for so long as second class citizens there is a difference between being black and being American.

We have seen the rise of Barack Obama; and before him Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell. Not to mention many in popular culture such as Sammy Davis Jr., Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. However; the fact is there is still a huge divide socially. Fewer black Americans identify the all-American optimism unlike the many white and Latinos who do. Seventy percent of black children are born into families without fathers, a trend Bill Cosby identified to continue. And white people, even back in 2008 the lacrosse team at Duke University (very much a white institution) was accused of raping a black girl and one of the alleged had apparently said, ‘You’re daddy picked the cotton from my shirt’. It appears that despite the time and change since the civil rights movement, there will always be an underlying thought that this was accepted as the norm for generations.

It was interesting listening to an interview from a reverend in Monroeville, Alabama, the town where Harper Lee lives and based her book on. He, a white man that lived through and supported the civil rights movement, believes it will be another generation before any underlying cultural and racial divide finally dissipates. I think it’s a testament that today Tom Robinson would have been cleared, though for many Americans they will always have to relive that guilt and injustice, like Atticus did.