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For Part One, click here.

For Part Two, click here.

Of course, Malema isn’t a uniquely South African problem, or even an African problem. Every country in the world has its Malemas; those hate-filled zealots who fervently believe that what they are right and everyone else is wrong. In a way, it’s something to be admired. Such strong beliefs are usually a sign that people are invested in the issue – they have a lot at stake. Why else would they care so much?

The Republican Party in America, for example, is a currently being dominated by a bunch of Malemas. Honestly, those guys scare the crap out of me. It’s a genuine cause for alarm that the government of the most powerful nation on Earth (as they keep telling us) is riddled with extreme religious fundamentalists; narrow reactionary ideologues who ridicule science, demonise their critics and peddle hypocrisy. OK, the last two are true of any politician. But you get my point. Fanatical Republicans are dangerous precisely because they care SO much about their God-blessed America.

It was the same with the Voortrekkers. Throughout history, extreme patriotism has been used as a justification for terrible acts of aggression and even genocide. After all, passion is only a hair’s breadth away from crazy.

Not that passion isn’t important. We all need to be passionate about something in our lives. Whether it’s work, family, country or Super Mario Brothers, something’s got to be at stake to make things matter. Just think about issues such as personal safety, political stability, social justice, economic health – if any of these things are at risk in your country, you better believe that you are going to give a shit.

Apathy, then, is the product of contentment.

Case in point: Canada – sanity capital of the world. Everything in Canada is sorted. The politics is mild to the point of irrelevance. Everything functions smoothly. There is no crime. The streets are clean. The economy seems to be holding up well enough. There’s ice-hockey on TV and hot coffee on every corner. OK, the climate sucks balls, but you can’t have everything.

Still, you can’t visit Canada without feeling that there’s something’s missing; a frisson of uncertainty, a lack of dire consequences. In other words, in Canada, nothing seems to matter. And that’s probably a good thing – a state towards which all the nations on Earth should be aspiring. It’s just so dull.

FYI, I’m about to embark on a family trip to New York and Toronto, and I’ll be writing as I go. So, I’ll reserve the right to shamelessly contradict myself about Canada in subsequent blog posts – or I might just keep on trolling. But for the moment let me return to the ostensible subject at hand by saying that I both revile and celebrate Julius Malema, and all the dictators for which he stands. Juju is a constant reminder that I care deeply about the country of my birth – it’s where I have placed my stake. And for that provocation I am truly grateful.

For Part One, click here.

Here’s the rub about Julius Malema: he is a troll that feeds off attention. But we can’t stop reporting on him because he is a very dangerous troll who needs to be tracked at all times. And that’s why I’m breaking my self-imposed vow to stop writing about Malema, lest I make him stronger. Recent events have forced a re-think in the way we handle this little sociopath. He can’t simply be ignored anymore. He needs to be stopped.

I was chatting the other day with someone who said that if Malema ever came into power he would be worse than Stalin. At first, I thought it was an obvious exaggeration for comic effect. Now, I’m not so sure. Malema, like Stalin, is a zealot and a revolutionary. They are also both dictators – leaders utterly convinced of their infallibility and utterly devoted to personal power; men who think that the rules don’t apply to them by virtue of their ‘noble’ goals. Both are capable of colossal self-delusion and hypocrisy. And both believe, like Napoleon the pig, that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Bearing this in mind, would a militarised Malema really order the murder of millions if they dared oppose him? Hard to say. Sociopath to psychopath is a leap. But it doesn’t jar with the overall pattern.

Wait, hang on. I’m getting carried away. Let’s ease off the hysteria pedal for a moment. I certainly don’t think that Malema is going to come within a mile of executive power. Our democracy is too mature for that, and his behaviour is simply too reckless. But stranger things have happened – put an opportunistic man in the right place at an unfortunate time, and you get the Holocaust.

Tenuous Nazi analogy aside, there’s another aspect to this Malema dilemma that’s even more worrying. Sometimes, Julius is correct. Let’s be clear:  I deplore his hijacking of the Marikana tragedy for political gain. I condemn his general air of entitlement. I reject his call for blanket nationalisation, partly because government is notoriously unable to manage large corporations and partly because I am suspicious that Malema is just using it as a Mugabe-style excuse so that state assets will  be easier to plunder ‘when he takes control’. But Juju does occasionally articulate some legitimate concerns.

For example, mine workers should get a minimum wage of R12 000 per month. Why not? It’s a reasonable request. Speaking in the long term, if we don’t start paying people a living wage, how are we going to build a sizeable middle class? And without a sizeable middle class, how are we going to build a sustainable nation? If that means corporate profits take a temporary knock, so what? It’s a moral, social and political imperative to dramatically increase salaries for the rank and file. Our future depends on it.

More to the point, Malema is only exploiting what is already there. He is not a cause. He is a symptom of some very deep seated problems in our country – a canary warning us that poisonous gas is about to overwhelm South Africa. In other words, we need to stop Malema by fixing the morass that spawned him. Maybe then his insatiable appetite for fame will guide him towards something more innocuous, like a TV game show.

You can read Part Three here.

OK, seriously, you guys. Julius Malema is a troll, and we have to stop feeding him. To be clear, I’m not talking about the mythical beast of Norse legend. I’m talking about the modern kind of troll – strange denizens of the web who prowl internet comments boards and social media sites, grabbing attention with provocative statements and then drinking in the affirmation or vitriol – makes no difference.

In the dark ages, pre-web, attention trolls weren’t very widespread. After all, access to an audience used to be restricted to those with means or talent. But then Tim Berners-Lee came along and suddenly everyone had equal access to a platform from which they could try to attract attention, like a desperate street prophet at a market.

Luckily, internet trolls can be controlled. Just learn to spot when you’re being trolled and ignore them. Don’t reply, don’t correct, don’t engage at all. Every comment, every like, every share is another drop of mother’s milk, sucked directly from your teat. Oh, the troll makes it tempting – spewing out nonsense specifically formulated to make you frothy. Even I can’t resist the odd bit of troll baiting, when I see or hear something particularly egregious that can’t stand unchallenged. But as soon as you catch yourself being lured into a troll trap, you must remove the teat immediately! If enough people do this, the troll with wither away and stop bothering you. Starving them of attention is the only way to kill a troll.

And I should know because [dramatic pause] I am a troll. Well, occasionally. I mean, I sometimes say controversial or outrageous things – in real life and on-line – because I find them funny, or think they’re good for a rise. Most often, people don’t notice. But I did write this one article, published a day after the death of Michael Jackson, in which I was…shall we say uncomplimentary?

I got more comments on that post than on anything else I had ever written – not much by Kardashian standards but enough to know that people were reading it. And they didn’t like what I had to say. But that didn’t matter, the attention was intoxicating – especially in a world where fame is the ultimate achievement.

Then I got pulled up short by a single comment. It simply said ‘You are a c*nt’.

Now, I stand by just about every word of that flippant article – I even wrote a defence of it, here. But I gradually realised that the comment was right. I was being a c*nt. So, I tried to stop. It isn’t easy. I still have the odd slip every now and then – a bit of c*untish behaviour here and there. But, on the whole, I think I keep my nose clean. Nevertheless, thanks to my experience, I know a troll when I see a troll.

And Malema is a troll – no doubt about it. He knows that as long as he is in the news, he is alive. So he makes sure he stays in the news by saying things that either appeal to people or make their blood boil – often at the same time. And the newspapers lovingly repeat every word. Why do they oblige such an obvious tactic? Because, in South Africa, nothing draws eyeballs like Julius Malema – apart from Zuma’s penis.

For Part Two, click here.

For Part Three, click here.