ON BEING expelled from the African National Congress (ANC) Julius Malema has since established the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). But it is worth taking a trip back in time, to April 2008, when Malema was first elected ANC Youth League president because his election had all the telltale signs of the chaos that would come to define him, and the problems that would lead to his expulsion.In the end there were just 187 votes in it — that was all the difference between Malema becoming a household name and being a forgotten also-ran.Here, then, is a retrospective look at the youth league’s 2008 elective conference as told by South Africa’s media.Setting the sceneOn Wednesday April 2, 2008 thousands of youth league delegates met in Mangaung, in the Free State, to convene a five-day elective congress (the ANC Youth League’s 23rd), the primary purpose of which was to elect a new president.The outgoing president was Fikile Mbalula.Some 3,643 delegates were formally registered to vote at the...
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