A DOSE of Julius Malema at the right time is a good thing.
This time it would have been from 18:00 to 20:00 - a debate on the possible nationalisation of our country's mines between the ANC's young lion and two less important South Africans who are less enthusiastic about nationalisation in any form.
Malema and the two lesser personages - Kuseni Dlamini, Anglo American CEO in South Africa until July and now with Old Mutual SA, and freelance financial journalist Tim Cohen - were each supposed to have 15 minutes to state their cases.
But because Malema alone favours nationalisation and the other two oppose it, the young provoker took twice his allotted time to speak. He sat down after 52 minutes, eventually allowing the other two to say their pieces.
The audience of about 500 consistied mostly of students - the real black diamonds. They were much more entertaining than any of the speakers.
For almost an hour they hung on Malema's lips in obvious hero-worship. They listened to the other two speakers' proposals in disciplined, polite silence, despite their apparent boredom.
How come? Why would students in academic disciplines like metallurgy revere someone who drops pearls of "wisdom" such as that nationalisation would attract more investment to this country because investors need South Africa more than we need investors?
Why is Malema wildly cheered by senior university students when he says that mining investors will never be able to stay away because they invest even in the world's bloodiest countries - while South Africa is such a peaceful place?
Malema referred to the poverty in Sekukuniland, in the mining community better known as the Eastern Limb of South Africa's platinum deposits.
"If you go to Sekukuni, there's nothing there that looks like platinum," said Malema. Sekukuni, he declared, looks like a desert but it has platinum. "They" take their platinum from the people of Sekukuni and process it somewhere else and invest it in a different place. If that's not bad enough, he complained, their trucks churn up the roads and they make no attempt to repair them. Government should "come and fix our roads", Malema insisted.
All that Anglo Platinum has done [he says] in the area is to donate signs for the schools and the environment - which are hardly visible. [Laughter. In fact, Angloplat sponsored the schools.]
Not mine-grabbing
Kodeza Matabatha, a metallurgy student at the University of Johannesburg, spoke up during question time. "I am from Sekukuniland. What Julius says is true - we live in a desert there," she announced.
In her view certain mining companies' social investment programmes in the area made no sense because the needs of communities simply didn't matter. "If the mines are nationalised, the state might first take time to find out what the people need," she suggested.
That's why the communities around the mines want 60% of the mines - not everything. "It's not a case of mine-grabbing as we saw with our neighbour," Malema declared. All that he wanted to do was to apply the Freedom Charter to the letter, and nothing would stop him doing so.
Dlamini, who was at Anglo until recently, in his 15 minutes resisted the temptation to expound on the evils of nationalisation. He provided a few statistics to demonstrate the seriousness of the issue.
In 2008 the mining industry generated an income of R405bn, but its costs were R409bn. The state would have to bear these types of losses unless it can mine significantly better than the private owners.
The key problem is to ensure that all South Africans benefit as much as possible from mining. Government involvement has already helped in various ways, such as in Brazil where mining companies pay royalties, 65% of which are used to develop mining communities.
In Brazil, as well, the state has a partnership stake in Vale, one of the world's biggest mining companies. But it doesn't manage Vale. It has a seat on the board and can veto decisions that might harm the national interest.
But, of the six possible types of state involvement, nationalisation is the most devastating, as seen in the total collapse of the Zambian copper mines after nationalisation in the 1960s.
Verbal garbage
Malema declared later in a long-winded reply that it had not been nationalisation that had shut down the Zambian mines, but the collapse of the copper market. "Copper went out of fashion," he maintained.
(Anglo was the owner of the Zambian copper mines before nationalisation in the early 1960s. In 2007 copper was Anglo's biggest earner, but this copper is now being mined in South America - and the Zambian mines are still shut.)
How does Malema gets away with such verbal garbage?
Today's undergraduates were between five and 10 years old when apartheid ended. They may be black diamonds, but they have known poverty and Malema speaks the language of the poor - his choice of words, expressions and one-liners are the idiom of the impoverished emerging youth.
They still carry anger over apartheid. It's for the same reason that people want to flay Professor Jonathan Jansen for forgiving the Reitz Four, while a fraud like Leonard Chuene gets away with what he did to Caster Semenya.
That anger among South Africans will long be kept alive by political hyenas like Malema and Dr Blade Nzimande.
It is a waste of time to expend energy on the Malemas and Nzimandes in our country. Channels into which to discharge that anger should rather be sought. Mining companies have until 2012 to do so, at which time Malema plans to submit a resolution on the nationalisation of mines to the next ANC Congress.
- Fin24