Whenever Malema is talking, there’s drama and comedy in equal measure. A lot of it is just nonsense, but sometimes, you need to dig a little deeper. Because there are the roots of concepts which could turn out to take hold and have some serious consequences. There’s also a way of looking at things that could predict a few headlines.

Let’s start with the philosophy. Yes really, there was some of it in what Julius Malema had to say on Wednesday. It’s a point about the rich. In Malema’s world, he is not rich, because I “don’t own the means of production”. Thus, “I am poor” even though he drives a Mercedes Benz and lives in Sandton. Yes, it is an absurd claim to make, we realise that, but we must follow it through to its conclusion, because it could turn out to be important. Malema is claiming that wealth is not a function of consumption, but of production, that you are only wealthy if you produce.

Then it’s worth examining the ownership of the JSE. According to the latest numbers, the JSE is 20% black-owned. Most people who own shares do so through pension funds and various other instruments. Many of them are hardly rich, but merely toilers in factories and offices throughout the land who happen to have jobs. Effectively, Malema could be saying that if you have a pension with a pension fund that’s invested with manufacturing companies, you are “rich”. Even if you have a Beetle and live in Brixton. And while he drives an AMG Merc and lives in Sandton, he’s not rich because he doesn’t produce anything.

But this definition of rich has other political uses. How hard is it for Malema to go a little further from “those who own the means of production” to “beneficiaries of apartheid”. And if someone is still poor, they do live in Sandton and drive a Merc, then are they always poor? If so, is that because of the colour of their skin? Thus, if you are black, are you definitively poor, no matter what? And does that make whites definitively rich, no matter what? This particular seed is hugely dangerous for all of us, and equally hugely useful for Malema. It’s exactly the type of thinking that led to the economic paradise across the “Great Grey-Green Greasy Limpopo”. It also gives the poor a reason not to try to make themselves rich, but merely to blame it on the currently “rich”, which happen also to be white.

Enough with the philosophy, and on to grubby money. Malema says he has but one income, his salary from the ANC. We know from previous press conferences that he earns, at most around R25 000, from Luthuli House. We know he spends far more than that. Just his car and house bond payments alone come to much more than that.  And his house has just been demolished and a new one is being built there for him. So he plainly gets money from somewhere else.

Now, how to prove it?

This is going to be the question bedevilling our politics for a while. We know that he used to be involved in several business, some of which have government contracts. We know he has resigned from those companies, or they are no longer officially trading. Whichever way it is now happening, the money will be very hard to track.

The one organisation that we know was doing that was Sars. That investigation may be ongoing, it may have ended, we don’t know. Sars won’t discuss the tax affairs of an individual (there are exceptions, however, several years ago now President Jacob Zuma ended up in the tax court for not submitting a tax return, though he did agree to make the fact public), and Malema knows that. So when he says he is “absolutely” tax compliant, we have no way of testing his claim. Should any information about Malema’s money leak from Sars, or even appear to leak from Sars, he’ll use that fact to claim that he’s the victim of a political conspiracy. And we all know how powerful that claim could be for the furthering of his political causes. Then the whole case could be chucked out. So whoever is going to press Sars hard on this is playing with populist fire.

Which means that we’re back to tracing cash. Any gangster movie will tell you that requires all sorts of resources, money and time. There is no doubt some people with a motive might try to find a way to make whatever is going on public. In the interests of transparency we wish them luck. But it remains crucial that no laws be broken.

The reason this is so difficult, of course, is that Malema is refusing to speak about his interests, because he is “not a public official”. He’s right there. Legally. And while there is a nuanced argument to be had around that, he’s not interested in having it, because it would hardly suit him. He does mention that one of the reasons he didn’t go into Parliament was because he didn’t want to have to deal with all the disclosure forms etc. That simple comment alone is rather revealing.

How will this play out politically? It will only make Malema stronger, of course. He has a line of argument indicative of the state of our politics and his role in it. Malema says, “I am welcome in squatter camps” and other ANC leaders are not. And he’s dead right. This is a political fact of South African life. There are reasons why some ANC leaders didn’t really hit the campaign trail that hard during this year’s local government elections, why Zwelinzima Vavi had to lead the charge in Eastern Cape, why Zuma pretty much stayed in KwaZulu-Natal. It’s because there is massive anger on the ground at those held responsible for conditions of the daily life of our citizens. But Malema is not. He’s an outsider, again, because he is not in power, he is not a public official. He has the best of both worlds. He is judged only on his rhetoric and not actual delivery.

In short, at the moment, he is having his cake, and eating it. And enjoying it very much. DM

Grootes is an EWN reporter.

Photo: Daily Maverick.