Robert Mugabe appears to have misled Malema on nationalisation

After a visit to Harare, Zimbabwe in 2010, African National Congress Youth League Leader Julius Malema became even more forthright in his views on nationalisation of mines and land reform campaigns.

From then on, his menacing rhetoric on race and the economy has graced every front page of almost every media house across Southern Africa.

Though there has been talk of an unimpressive academic background - people having been told on many occasions that he barely passed matric, failing, amongst some of the subjects, lowly woodwork - Malema seems to be a fast learner quickly catching on to Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's lessons on nationalisation and land grabs.

The result is enormous pressure being exerted on the ruling party and government by the ANC Youth League's new policies.

It is true that millions of poor blacks are still waiting for the African National Congress led government to deliver on the promises it made on coming to power in 1994.

At that point it set itself an ambitious target of redistributing 30 percent of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014.

With four years to go before the delivery date is due, the government has only acquired about four percent of land from private owners for redistribution, and says that it needs to accelerate the process amid growing unrest.

Under the willing buyer/ willing seller policy, Malema is right that the government has failed to ensure the transfer of enough land to the country's land-hungry blacks.

Under this policy the government pays market related prices for land voluntarily offered for sale but this is proving to be problematic if the government hopes to fulfill the target it set for itself.

Now having the lessons he learned during his visit to Zimbabwe, Malema is querying why black South Africans should pay for land that was allegedly originally stolen from them, echoing the exact same argument Mugabe used during his land grabs from whites in Zimbabwe.

It is no coincidence that Malema took up the chant that people should grab land and nationalise the mines in earnest after visiting Mugabe.

Unfortunately it seems that Mugabe didn't tell the youth leader the whole truth behind the 2000 land grabs in Zimbabwe.

Why, for example, did Mugabe only decide to start doing this in 2000?

He had after all already been in power for 20 years before that.

The real reason why Mugabe went on this land grabbing campaign was as an election gimmick which was meant to cement his presidential stay after the birth of the most serious opposition party in Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change under Morgan Tsvangirai.

Since Mugabe came to power on independence in 1980, he had never faced an opposition party which presented a very real challenge to his continued rule in that country.

In 2000, Mugabe saw the danger of losing an election for the first time looming large at the hands of the MDC.

His response was to order the unpopular land grabs that has defined Zimbabwe's current economic hardships since then and occasioned the massive drop in the popularity of the ZANU-PF.

The reason why Zimbabwe embarked on land grabs wasn't to give land back to the people, it was a badly calculated move to sway people's minds to vote for the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front by means of gifts.

Those who have read and analysed Mugabe's land invasions know that there was a hidden agenda and that was winning elections regardless of the economic fallout.

This is common knowledge and need hardly be reanalyzed here.

The question that comes to mind then is did Malema fail to understand the whole picture or did Mugabe mislead him by failing to point out the not inconsiderable drawbacks?

Malema certainly seems to have the part which might bring about an election victory down pat but the part that cripples the economy, starves the masses and sends the ruling party's popularity to oblivion appears to have eluded him.

So too a future where clinging to power relies on military solutions.

Let's give the Youth League leader the benefit of the doubt and suggest that Mugabe was hardly rushing to tell him about the debacle that he authored.

A common theme amongst many conservative South Africans is that their country is on the way of becoming another Zimbabwe, and this point was also made in the recent hate speech case brought against Malema by Afri Forum and Tau SA.

Malema, as the self-styled leader of angry, jobless and poor black youth, is being feared because it is believed that he may provoke this potentially dangerous group of people who would have little to lose if the country becomes another Zimbabwe.

At this point the Youth League and its leader needs to grasp the entire concept that is nationalisation and land grab policies and focus on the outcomes of such policies.

Then, in the light of that knowledge, justify those policies so that they are recognised as beneficial or - just as everyone is telling the government - come up with ones that are accepted as in the best interests of South Africa.