LETTER: ANC’s silence over Malema’s rhetoric raises questions

While I have been an energetic critic of President Cyril Ramaphosa and the destructive policy agenda he has presided over, I felt some sympathy for him facing President Donald Trump, who came prepared with video clips of Julius Malema in full race-onslaught mode.

It is true that Malema and the EFF are not in the national government. Yet, it has not gone unnoticed that condemnation of his rhetoric from the ANC — or Ramaphosa personally — has been almost nonexistent.

This contrasts starkly with the robust responses that are commonplace — even up to cabinet level — where racism is alleged.

Moreover, there is no convention in SA politics of placing a cordon sanitaire around parties such as the EFF and the MK party in the manner that, say, the Alternative für Deutschland is kept out of power in Germany.

Indeed, the ANC and EFF have partnered at municipal level. Numerous ANC leaders would prefer to exclude the DA from the national government, and cut a deal with the EFF and MKP.

All of this speaks to unsound impulses in our politics. This is not about Trump, white genocide conspiracy theories or a call for prohibiting incendiary, race-baiting words (I am firmly against doing so). It is about whether the leadership of the country is sufficiently committed to SA’s future and a nonracial, constitutional democracy that it is willing unambiguously to make that case in the country’s tumultuous internal politics, not only for external consumption.

Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations

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