Julius "Too Cool for School" Malema

Our popularist president is clearly feeling the heat of his seat in government. Why else would he would be prancing around on stage and trading jocularities with that Too Cool for School ANC Youth League buffoon Julius Malema?

We saw in the national election that Malema’s talent for shooting from the hip up the skirts of authority, white people and women that Julius can do wonders for aligning you with the masses. Malema’s vacuous popularism upsets so many also delights millions more and so to Limpopo went Mr Zuma to tell Malema’s homeboys that young Julius was a “leader in the making” and someone who would be worthy of inheriting the ANC. Click here for the full story on IOL.

Zuma also said, reports IOL:

“He is a young man who is in the process of growing up.”

Making fun of Malema’s expanding girth, Zuma said “he is a bit bigger now and he can intimidate bigger people”.

Zuma went on to say Malema did not merely speak about theory, he also did things and he was “real and not artificial”.

Articulate stuff but the truth is that Malema is neither that young (he’s 28, an age when most middle-class South Africans are knuckling down in their jobs and thinking of buying property) nor real. He peddles a ridiculouly transparent brand of popularism. He’s a ruthlessly ambitious, ill educated fat cat and would be better suited to hip hop than politics.

But then this is South Africa and look at our president… ruthlessly ambitious, transparently popularist, ill educated. He would be a fat cat if he didn’t have so many wives and children to support but he’s not doing too badly with girlfriends on the side and a coterie of rich businessmen to cover his expenses through The Friends of Jacob Zuma trust.

Makes me shake my educated, underambitious, financially struggling head, it does. It would be amusing if it weren’t so damn discouraging.

Click here to read an excellent M&G profile and analysis of the Malema phenomenon from a couple weeks back.

And take this from whence it comes, YouTube. It’s a video clip of Zuma speaking about Malema on something purporting to be “MTV Base” posted today on the site:

Popularity: 14% [?]