ANC youth leader mired in controversy

Julius Malema, president of the African National Congress Youth League, was found guilty Monday of hate speech and harassment for saying that a woman who accused now President Jacob Zuma of rape had a “nice time” because she stayed in his house until morning and asked for taxi money home.

South Africa’s Equality Court ordered him to apologize and pay $6,700 to a women’s shelter. Malema said he planned to appeal.

The 29-year-old Malema, often lampooned in the media for failing woodwork at school, has made a name for himself as the angry young man of South African politics, hurling the kind of insults few others dare. As a result, he’s in the headlines almost as often as Zuma.

“I’m known for shooting from the hip & ignoring political correctness,” says Malema’s Twitter feed.

Zuma, who was acquitted of the rape charge in 2006, has compared Malema to anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela. Malema is popular among the young unemployed underclass, but he appalls many among the country’s whites and the black intelligentsia.

Malema has called opposition leader Helen Zille, who heads the provincial government in Western Cape, a satanist, racist and colonialist who sleeps with her Cabinet colleagues. (She’s threatened to sue.) He declared that another opposition figure, Patricia De Lille, did not look like a married woman and that her husband should remarry.

He’s threatened to “Kill for Zuma,” and faces new hate speech charges for singing a song containing the words, “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer,” which many whites see as inciting violence.

“I will keep singing the song to remind the youth of our struggles. I have not incited any violence but simply shone the light on issues,” said Malema last week via Twitter.

Malema often attacks government ministers in his own ANC party.

He was accused of speeding last year and then bullying police to escape a fine.

“I only know revolution, I don’t know anything about driving,” he remarked later on his Twitter feed, where he has dubbed himself the “Forever Young Lion of the North” in a reference to his Limpopo base.

Despite controversy, Malema has become a powerful figure in the ANC, and is reputed to have Zuma’s ear.

Analysts believe his influence stems in part from his attacks on former President Thabo Mbeki before last April’s elections, which enlivened alienated young voters and brought them back into the ANC fold.

“Concerns were rife that increasing unhappiness with bad service delivery was threatening the ANC’s authority and providing a breeding ground for anti-ANC sentiments,” the weekly Mail and Guardian reported in October, quoting an anonymous senior ANC source. “Then came Malema and, in one swoop, he captured the hearts and minds of these straying sheep with his frank comments and criticism.”

But Malema, who drives a Mercedes and owns two houses, one of them in upscale Sandton, has lately attracted a different kind of criticism: for the contrast between his expensive lifestyle and his modest salary.

Malema claimed he had resigned his positions on companies when he became chief of the Youth League, yet his signature appeared on the shareholding documents of a company that benefited from government contracts, according to media reports.

In response, Malema accused a journalist of forging his signature.

South African Business Day columnist Jacob Dlamini said Malema’s image as a buffoon distracted from his political power and immense influence.

“We love the silliness of it all, the crassness and the crudity. We marvel at how someone so ill-equipped to lead can become such a national figure,” he wrote in a November column titled “While SA laughs, Malema spreads his tentacles.”

“Strip away that caricature, kill the cartoon, and what you are left with is a cunning thug . . . a true political don and one of the biggest influence-peddlers” in South Africa.

“How indeed has Malema got so rich, and does he even pay his taxes? We are not likely to ask these questions so long as we are focused on the caricature, the cartoon.”

Equality Court Magistrate Colleen Collis voiced a common criticism in her court ruling Monday:

“Mr. Malema, being a man of vast political influence, be wary of turning into a man who often speaks but never talks,” she warned him.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com