PORTRAIT OF JULIUS Malema ANC Youth League, SOUTH AFRICA:

"Kill the farmer, kill the Boer"

All entreaties were in vain: for a full five years, the African
National Congress (ANC) Julius Malema, the radical leader of the ANC
Youth League, expelled from the ruling party - and the political
career of the 30-year-old demagogue so perhaps put an early end. At
the same time he was deposed as leader of the ANC Youth League.
Malema, who would appeal the verdict, was accused sown with a series
of statements of "discord" in the ANC and brought the party into
disrepute to have. One surprise was the high penalties that reason,
not because the firebrand had been cautioned for his continued
criticism of President Jacob Zuma and the ANC previously was under
observation.

The biggest beneficiary of the decision is without doubt the ANC
president Zuma, who now creates one of his sharpest critics off their
backs. Even from the other side Malema threatens trouble. Thereby
having a police task force examined its dubious business practices and
the apparently arbitrary awarding of state contracts, which deserves
Malema will have € million illegally. Moreover, it threatens an
indictment for tax evasion.

This Malema had in the past few weeks trying everything to save his
image as the voice of the poor: He took off his expensive Breitling
watch and now comes with a Basque cap on instead to look like the
young Che Guevara. Just two weeks ago he had led several thousand
young people in a protest march to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and
the South African Chamber of Mines to protest against the dominance of
whites in the economy - and the alleged exclusion of blacks from the
business world.

The calls, however unpleasant memories of the events in neighboring
Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe's white farmers made the scapegoat for
the failure of his own regime and dispossessed - with disastrous
consequences for the food supply and the economy of the country.
Malema has often been outed as an ardent supporter of Mugabe and his
policies praised as a model for South Africa. As recently as September
Malema was convicted of incitement to racial hatred because he was
performing at the old ANC battle song "Kill the farmer, kill the boer"
intoned.