Which university did Julius Malema attend?

Julius Malema the President of the Economic Freedom Fighters will be graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Africa this evening. The milestone is incredible. Julius Malema kind of round off the one common fact, that all who currently serve in the EFF Central Command are men and women of letters.

Economic Freedom Fighter leader Julius Malema.

EFF Top 6. They are educated with university degrees and still very much in touch and in tune with the grassroots: the people’s leaders

In close quarters Julius Malema has inimitable warmth, a generousness of spirit, and modesty that never diminish his presence but rather amplifies and enlarges it. In close quarters Julius Malema has this remarkable facility for putting people – regardless of their station in life – at ease. When you meet him, you come across a person who is so calm and relaxed in his own skin, so profoundly at peace with his person, that he had no use for self-praise or self-inflation.

These personal characteristics were shown in the modesty of his wedding, and now his university graduation is low-key. If it was another person, another empty politician these two events would have been capitulated to glamour level. Wedding made the wedding of the year, an extravaganza with glamour and glitz. His university graduation would have been followed by a gigantic reveling graduation jamboree to lash out at his empty critics who cartooned him all these years about his failed woodwork in high school. The same critics are slaving under leaders with no education.

I am curious how Julius Malema has been able to maintain such a remarkable balance under harsh and hard situations.

He started his Bachelor of Arts degree during the darkest period of his life; when he was subjected to a merciless painful experience of disciplinary hearing within the ANC. Many people could have quit. But he did not quit.

Then began the toughest life outside the ANC. The formation of the Economic Freedom Fighters. This was a plunge into the unknown, but he made it, and he did not quit his studies. That required hard work, dedication, and self-discipline.

The whole process involved sleepless nights and stamina to withstand great discouragements, the ridicule he faced, and the negativity from all angles. He withstood the harshest criticism. We have people who always seek out negative information about people and use it to attempt to destroy them just because they are not ANC. They said all kinds of nasty things about him with certainty and boldness, things which later were all proven to be false.

Today the EFF is a vital vitalizing community that defines and shapes our society in very profound and remarkable ways. In the midst of all the hard work and strenuous life, Julius Malema could have quit his university studies. But he did not. He packed his textbooks as he moved across the nation laying the foundation for the EFF,  addressing the masses. For sure his Bachelor of Arts in Politics came very much in handy in those times.

Many people have asked how did Julius Malema achieved this lasting durable character of being a paragon of the poor people – and that the political party he is leading is the aspiration and hope of the poor people. First, Julius Malema is deeply human. And for him, this means a stubborn belief in the dignity of every person. Nothing angers him more than seeing politicians abusing poor people to become super rich with their friends.  Actually and in essence we now see the real reasons why he was expelled from the ANC.

Julius Malema’s concern for the poor is not phony but real. If he was a phony and a liar he would not have gone very far with his lies. Lies don’t fly very high – they cannot be sustained. At the end of the day, the liar only deceives himself, not other people. Over a process of time, people have the capacity for discernment and can tell the truth from lies. Just look at how people are now exposed to who they are and how they just use the poor people to become super rich with their friends.

Being a student is a humiliating humbling process as professors mark your assignments making put-down comments.  It showed humility for him to undergo such a process for such a long time. He could have quit but he did not.

“We salute the CIC and call upon all young people of South Africa to emulate his example. Value education against all the odds and never compromise in the struggle for Free Education for all”. — EFF Spokesperson Mbuyeseni Ndlozi. Mbuyiseni is a versatile Wits Ph.D. student in Political Sociology with a research project that looks at Black Youth Politics.