So Julius Malema and his EFF hooligans have been at it again.
This weekend they went on the rampage at Vodacom stores in Gauteng and Limpopo to protest against a speech that was recently made by Mvuso Msimang.
As the chairman of Corruption Watch, Msimang used his keynote speech at the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards ceremony to label Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu as “abusers of democracy.”
Here’s the thing, though: the EFF is the party that has made a habit of calling their political rivals awful names in public and ridiculing them out loud.
It is a tactic of humiliation that has become their entire public image and their supporters love it.
Just two weeks ago, they called Pravin Gordhan a “racist and corrupt dog” and Zondo Commission lawyer Paul Pretorius a “bastard.”
And last week they took aim at the DA’s parliamentary whip John Steenhuisen, calling him stupid for not having a university degree.
Yet, during a raucous parliamentary debate last week, Malema got very upset when Steenhuisen called him a VBS looter.
They work from the schoolyard bully rulebook. Chapter 1, Page1: Taunt, mock, call them ugly names; but get very upset and abusive when they do the same to you.
So I have been wondering about the PC properness of those who oppose destructive and divisive leaders like Malema. Polite discourse and decorum don’t work.
During the fireworks in Parliament last week, I noticed DA members finally putting into practice the same dirty rules that the EFF has been using, by chanting “pay back the money” in the direction of the red overalls.
Being the bullies that they are, of course, they didn’t like it at all and reverted to calling the DA members racist, which had nothing to do with anything.
You see, the problem with fair-minded, left-leaning people is their tendency to be PC. They don’t want to be seen as rude and offensive, even when they are being victimised by rude and offensive people.
It is this catastrophic failure in how we engage bombastic rivals that empower and emboldens people like Malema.
Please let’s encourage our MPs to be as vocal and as obtuse as EFF members when tackling the EFF in Parliament. Bullies only stop bullying when they are made to taste a little of their own medicine.