It was at 02h33 just this morning when Dead American Writers cut through my sleep. I reached out to grab my ringing cellphone, my senses still dulled and drugged by the heavy slumber I had been so rudely pulled out of. Who the hell would call me at that hour? Was it my colleagues, about to breathlessly announce that we need a story chop-chop? Were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse upon us? Had Nelson Mandela finally passed on? [Click link for more]

It was my friend. He sounded like he was at a club or a bar. He had told me that he would be going to The Bank (the black diamond version of Tiger Tiger) on Sunday night. “Ya? Ufunani?” I mumbled. What did he want?

“Dubula, dubula” he roared into the phone. “Dubula ibhunu!”

In the background I could hear noise from what sounded like a packed club. Someone had put on ‘Ayesaba Amagwala’ and it sounded like every inebriated voice in the place was singing along to the words. My friend’s desire to share the religious atmosphere at The Bank with me was touching, but I hadn’t had much sleep that weekend. After letting him serenade me for a minute, I hung up.

And that is precisely my gripe with the case currently being heard in courtroom 8A of the South Gauteng High Court. What did AfriForum and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) think they were going to achieve by going after the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in this way? What was the plan exactly?

We all know how this all happened – Malema sang ‘Ayesaba Amagwala’ at the University of Johannesburg and a bunch of Afrikaner organisations decided that they would go to court to have the ANCYL President stopped. They don’t want the song to be banned in the sense that nobody would be allowed to sing it. No, they want the court to rule that this youth leader singing this song in these situations creates a climate of hostility, which may or may not lead to a marginalisation of the Afrikaans community. Or something.

First, what AfriForum and TAU are trying to prove is extremely difficult, if not impossible to prove. They are trying to prove that Malema’s intentions when he gets onto a podium and sings the controversial song are bad. Well, nobody can prove what Malema intends when he sings or says anything. We can only link his actions to certain consequences and neither AfriForum nor TAU is arguing that Malema singing ‘Ayesaba Amagwala’ leads to anything other than a “hostile climate”. Nobody is trying to prove in court the argument much favoured on the blogosphere, that this song is the reason for farm murders.

The more I think about this, the more it just plain pisses me off. Not only is AfriForum/TAU case hanging on the slimmest of chances, the manner of TAU’s counsel Roelof du Plessis may have just turned the public’s sympathy at large against them. The moment of truth was when the Youth League erected a giant screen outside the court house so that its members outside could follow the court proceedings. I went twice to the courtroom since the different witnesses started testifying. It is an awfully small public gallery in there, and the journalists present take up most of it. There is just no space in there and each day I had to fight through a thick pack of ANCYL men trying to push their way into the courtroom. The screen is understandable – ENews is running a live daily feed.

But no. According to Du Plessis, the screen presents a danger to him because everyone outside the courtroom will now see his face. TimesLive rightly crowned him Mampara of the Week, and said, “Ooh De la Rey, De la Rey, wie sal hierdie Mampara lei?” All we could see in this man is a frightened and aggressive man – and that is how he conducted his cross-examination of Malema. He was hostile, termagant and obstinate.

Contrast his demeanour to that of Malema. The man so often portrayed in the media as a braying buffoon was calm, considered and thoughtful in his testimony. You got the sense that the lawyers thought that they would be able to goad him into losing his cool in court. Malema was ready for that. He was ready with his answers and has now been able to remake himself as a hero and a martyr fighting the good fight against the likes of Roelof du Plessis.

And that is why the crowd of partying young, black people were singing ‘Ayesaba Amagwala’ last night. Malema is a hero to them, fighting to protect our struggle heritage from idiotic men. We’ve dredged up the past and emotions are running high in these circles. And all of this is happening in an election year.

South Africa is desperate to move on. We’ve had enough. We want to move on, but this court case has succeeded in legitimising Malema all over again – a man who wants to keep South Africa in this perpetual state of fighting old battles.

There will come a time when the ANC, the PAC and everyone else will lay down these struggle songs. They will in time become redundant and unnecessary. Banning them is not the way to do that. All AfriForum and TAU will succeed in doing is to galvanise the radical elements within the ANCYL, who will in turn provoke a reaction from the radicals among the right-wing whites.

Before this month, I doubt my friend even knew the words to ‘Ayesaba Amagwala’. Last night he woke me up to sing it with gusto. Job well done, AfriForum and TAU. Job well done indeed.

Further reading:

When a legal representative makes a case for the opponent in Constitutionally Speaking.