Optically Self-Obsessed Malema Is Hopelessly Wrong on This One

As a “Squealer” avatar of a latter-day “Animal Farm” plantation propagandist, South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party leader Julius Sello Malema inimitably talks a good game, as we New Yorkers are fond of saying here in our Big Apple cosmopolis (See “Xenophobic tensions: 'Ghana's evacuation response unnecessary, too quick' — Malema” Modernghana.com 5/28/26). But, of course, the available and the readily accessible historical records on the ground tell us a completely different story altogether.

You see, until very recently, I studiously followed the political career and activism of the now fast-maturing and rising former Youth-Wing Leader of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), of which I was once An Honorary Member at The City College of New York of The City University of New York (CCNY of CUNY), during the late 1980s, and can at the very best issue Mr. Malema a grade of “Mixed Review” or a “C”-Letter Grade. One only has to track the “Nativistic” set of circumstances involving the EFF’s Founder and Leader, in particular his insufferably crude and downright primitive Xenophobic attitude towards White South Africans, in the wake of the historically auspicious assumption of the Nelson Rolithlathla Mandela-led Indigenous Black-Majority Government in the Mid-1990s onwards, in order to arrive at the soberingly disturbing conclusion that it was only a matter of time before the same level of cataclysm was witheringly and “genocidally”extended to or profusely and virulently visited on “Foreign-African Migrants” driven to desperately seeking economic asylum in “Black Africa’s” most advanced and powerful economic and military powerhouse.

This was clearly the message that the strapping “Goliath-like” Zulu petty chieftain - at least that was how the buffy young man on the Tik-Tok videoclip dispatched to me by a very dear friend in Ghana looked to many of us - “epically furiously” warning Non-South African Africans to immediately leave South Africa and to their own “godforsaken” briar patches of earth of erstwhile colonial polities before before the Chaka-The-Zulu-lookalike Lion King and his Corporate Gang of South-African Nationalists let loose on them their Tomahawk-Assegais of uncontainable conniption that was apt to make the February 28, 2026 Gangster-like strafing of the airspace of the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran, by US’ President Donald John Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin “Mileikowsky” Netanyahu seem like a celebratory confetti-dropping of caramel candies at the end of Ramadan.

Anyway, at ANC rallies, in the wake of the Mandela-led Black-Majority Rule, Mr. Malema could be seen and heard leading a choral group of party stalwarts chanting about how to swiftly and thoroughly rid South Africa of the “White Vermin” in general but the Boer-Afrikaners in particular: “One Bullet for the Boer!” the chorus thundered. Now, Yours Truly vividly recalls writing and publishing an article or two on several websites, in which this writer earnestly pleaded with the ANC’s leaders to promptly rein in these grossly misguided wet-eared party goons or be prepared to soon lose the party’s democratic legitimacy and with the latter occurrence, the democratic reins of governance.

That was, in short, how Julius Sello Malema was strategically auspiciously relieved of his executive party portfolios and, finally, effectively and summarily expelled from his African National Congress’ party membership. But, characteristically the mercurial Trickster of Ananse genius, in Akan-Ghanaian folklore, it was not until Mr. Malema had abortively attempted to outmaneuver his party’s higherups by staging what clearly appeared to be a mischievous assay at a “Palace/Domestic Coup-D’etat,” which would have enabled this Political Civet Cat to gain an iron-clad control over the leadership of the ANC in his home region.

This is the young man who saw absolutely nothing wrong with the morally untenable excesses of the late Mrs. Winnie Mandela - aka Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela Mandela - including the globally infamous and widely condemned brutal assassination of 14-year-old Master James Sepei - aka Stompie Moeketsi/ Stompie Seipei - on dubious grounds of espionage by the so-called Mandela Football Club, composed of Winnie Mandela bodyguard corps of hangers-on, on the orders of their Principal Patron. Mrs. Mandela would escape indictment and criminal prosecution and conviction primarily because of her high political profile, in both her own right and as the globally renowned spouse of the future President Mandela.

But what I really wanted to highlight here, more than anything else, is the readily accessible record of the fact that this is absolutely not the very first time that Ghanaians and other African, Non-South African migrants and immigrants have egregiously suffered the sort of grave and/or grievous indignities, including murder, that are reportedly being presently visited on the aforesaid group of Black and Indigenous continental Africans, a remarkable percentage of them, as we learned just a couple of days ago, as of this writing, from the Government of Ghana, legally and legitimately recognized “South African Aliens.”

A little over a decade ago, a legally resident Ghanaian businessman was brutally murdered in South Africa by an organized horde of neighborhood thugs, for simply attempting to legitimately make an honest living in that country. It was during President John Dramani Mahama’s first term in office. As Yours Truly vividly recalls, it was Mr. Kwesi Ahwoi, the youngest of the Ahwoi Brothers, who was Ghana’s High Commissioner/Ambassador to South Africa. This writer also vividly recalls urging the Ghanaian Government at the time to make the strongest diplomatic statement by adamantly refusing to have the deceased victim of xenophobia buried in the soil and on the land of the nation where, as I vividly recall, the Sekondi-Takoradi native had so painfully and unspeakably had his precious and fruitful life so criminally and savagely snatched from him.

Unfortunately, as usual, a good-game talking President Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa suavely managed to dissuade either President Mahama or his then-incumbent and newly elected successor, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, I forget which, to let the brutally slain Ghanaian shop owner to have his savagely mauled remains “laid to rest” in the very land that had given him absolutely no rest. Ghanaian leaders need to take the lives of their nationals resident abroad more seriously. As I vividly recall, back then High Commissioner Kwesi Ahwoi appeared to be timid and disconcerting nonchalant about the entire gruesome situation as, for instance, lamely claiming that many of the Ghanaian victims in South Africa were not swamping Ghana’s High Commission with the sort of desperation that required urgent response to their needs and problems.

Ultimately, though, the one most significant takeaway here is the fact that for the 45-year-old Mr. Julius Sello Malema, of the so-called Economic Freedom Fighters’ Party, the only thing that really matters most here, amidst all the chaotic and the bloody mess, is the “Negative Image” and the “Sullied Reputation” of the New Post-Apartheid and Post-Mandela South Africa, and definitely not the lives of the Indigenous African, Non-South Africans who are being brutally slain and physically and emotionally, psychologically and verbally abused, wantonly, around the clock. If you thought P W Botha and John Vorster were Devils Incarnate, you may need to have your brains critically examined.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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