By now you’ve seen some version of this footage of the events earlier today when Julius Malema, the leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), kicked a journalist from the BBC, Jonah Fisher, out of an ANCYL press conference for interrupting him.

Malema was there to talk about his recent visit to neighboring Zimbabwe where he (Malema) publicly expressed his support for that country’s disastrous and violent leader, Robert Mugabe (1980 – present). Malema, a loyalist of current South African President, Jacob Zuma, has been a font of racism, fascism and just plain rudeness over the last few months.

During this week’s press conference, Malema called Fisher, among other things, a “bastard,” “small boy” and accused him of having “white tendencies.”

Malema is much a creation of the South Africa’s media, but he is the ANC’s responsibility.

I’m wondering how long it will take before the ANC’s leaders kick him out?

Some think he will self-destruct or that he’ll be defeated in internal ANC politics. Zuma himself has criticized Malema in the third person thus far. (Already there are rumors that ANC higher-ups were the source for the damaging news stories about Mamela’s corrupt dealings and ostentatious lifestyle). But as a keen observer of South African politics reminded me recently that is highly unlikely: “Something tells me they couldn’t even if they wanted to.”

One reason may be that Malema is a power broker in the ANC. But even more importantly: The ANC needs him to keep alive a certain idea of the organization as the sole heir of the anti-apartheid movement (with its songs and memories) so that people won’t turn their songs against Zuma (or even Malema) for that matter. Thabo Mbeki, Zuma’s predecessor, did not learn that lesson.

Malema also provides cover for the empty politics of the ANC and its unlikely allies in the media and corporate world to get by on feel-good rhetoric (“rainbow nation,” African Renaissance, rugby nationalism) and the theatrics of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As another political observer wrote to me:

What image of the future is there? On the one hand you got Malema, but on the other hand you got the ongoing, crushing racism of life in South Africa, and that’s what gives his “war talk” an audience.  So, does the ANC (or anyone else) have anything on offer besides the state-as-site-of-accumulation?

Oh and David Smith, the South Africa correspondent of The Guardian also has this audio report discussing the meaning of Malema that more or less agrees with that of my interlocutors above. I am not sure whether that is a good thing.