Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leaders hold champagne glasses during the party’s final election rally at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on July 31, 2016 in Polokwane. Picture: Gallo Images
You have to acknowledge one thing about Julius Malema: you never know which way he’s going to jump next.
And when it comes to popular causes, the EFF leader has proved adept at jumping on a bandwagon that is already rolling.
That’s what he did with the land expropriation issue – and this week he came out left field to take up the cudgels for the campaign to ban all alcohol advertising. Now a poster-boy for clean living, Malema came across as a latter-day Bob Marley when he compared alcohol to dagga.
Marley famously once said: “Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction” … and Malema parroted that argument.
Undoubtedly, alcohol abuse in this country is a problem, but it is not the advertising of the product that leads to drunkenness, which in turns leads to all sorts of violent behaviour.
Also, the campaign to ban booze advertisements came from the ANC originally, the brainchild of Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi.
Malema certainly looks like a typical politician, cynically trying to be all things to all people, expand his support base and claim glory by appropriating (or should that be expropriating?) the ideas of others.
Without acknowledgment (or compensation)…