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Instead of using his platform to drive constructive change, Julius Malema has once again divided the people of South Africa. By re-iterating his stance that South Africans must "take back the land that belongs to them", Malema has resorted to crude populism and racial rhetoric to shore up his chances ahead of the ANC Youth League elective conference.

Malema is correct in saying that the government's current programme of agrarian reform is inefficient, but to infer that Mugabe-esque land grabs is the solution to our problems is simplistic and destructive. To also say that "South Africans must take back the land" is to infer that White South Africans are second class citizens of the rainbow nation.

Malema couches his arguments in a simplistic Marxism-cum-fascism, rooted in a destructive kind of African nationalism. This kind of 19th century philosophy to drive national programmes has failed all over world through the 20th century. The Congress of the People stands for solutions and engagement, not division.

The fact of the matter is that it is not White South Africans who are holding back the programme of land redistribution, it is the ANC government who are betraying its base by turning the land issue into a race issue, and slowing down delivery of land to the landless. There are millions of acres of public land, owned by the government, that can easily be given to citizens. This, together with the willing buyer, willing seller model, and training and development schemes to create sustainable agrarian reform is the solution. Instead, government has held onto this land for a combination of reasons, such as impending underhanded sales to consortia of business people connected to government for commercial exploitation. To merely take the land from white South Africans is to repeat the mistakes of our painful past.

Julius Malema is not an economist, a philosopher or a progressive thinker of any description. He is a populist who uses his limited and skewed understanding of Marxism and the Freedom Charter to divide and conquer. This pseudo-intellectual is not fit to lace Nelson Mandela's shoes, let alone succeed him as the custodian of the Freedom Charter.