MUCH in the way of chatter here at the Mahogany Ridge about Thursday’s Constitutional Court ruling. There was, obviously, the damning findings against President Jacob Zuma and the National Assembly, as well as the court’s unambiguous position on the key aspects of our democracy.

The more forward-thinking among us also made mention of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s current investigation into the affairs of the President’s friends and for a while there it sounded as if the Ridge was hosting a regatta of small boats with two-stroke engines: Gupta gupta gupta gupta gupta…

Elsewhere, though, the greatly reduced Julius Malema — now half the blowhard he was six months ago — was accusing Zuma and company of using the recent visit to the United Arab Emirates to spirit R6-billion out of the country.

“That was not an official visit,” the EFF commander-in-chief was quoted as saying, “it was a personal visit. Zuma took money to the UAE. That’s where they are dumping money. The Guptas have taken R6 billion to Dubai. Zuma goes to Dubai on some unexplained trip. Why did Zuma go to Dubai? Because when Zuma travels he doesn’t get searched by customs. He left with bags of money to be dumped in Dubai. That’s where they are dumping our money with the Guptas.”

Well, some of us had to check our calendars and, no, this wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke. That is, not unless March had also been on a diet and had lost a day or two.

More ominously, Malema also took aim at targets further afield than the Guptas and issued notice against other prominent business dynasties, including the Oppenheimer, Rupert, and Menell families. 

There was, in his bluster, a terrible echo of the antisemitic campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s by Afrikaner nationalists —although this time it seemed the problem was not a perceived Zionist threat to the polity but rather its zombification.

Yes, according to Malema, the undead are among us. “Wealthy families in this country have been zombifying leaders of the ANC since the days of Nelson Mandela.” 

The latter, he said, had been turned into a zombie by the Menell family who then pursuaded the former president to pursue a neo-liberal agenda instead of nationalising the mines.

Former finance minister Trevor Manuel and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa also got the treatment, this time from the Ruperts and the Oppenheimers, respectively. In the case of Manuel, Malema said, he had once been advised against wearing a red necktie as this represented socialism (and not, as we supposed, wanting to look like a thermometer.) 

“There is no worse form of zombification than this one where you are even told what to wear,” the CIC added.

Not being of old white mining stock, the Guptas could be regarded as arrivistes here, but this hasn’t stopped them from capturing Zuma and many others in his cabinet and the ruling party. 

In this regard, Malema urged the Treasury to pry into the affairs of Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba for allegedly not declaring extra income and living beyond his means. “It is not a secret,” he said, “that Malusi Gigaba is one of the Gupta zombis and they clothe him and take care of all the luxurious life, him, his wife and concubines live through amongst other things, an off shore account.” (sic)

Malema’s spelling of “zombis” is both historically correct and instructive. Because it is the Haitian French spelling, we realised that he was, in fact, referring to the earlier, Caribbean zombies — the true zombies — and not the later flesh-eating ghouls of Hollywood.

Unlike the latter, the Haitian bunch are widely regarded as dead persons physically revived by sorcerers or witches. These undead are then under the control of these necromancers and can be used as personal slaves. They will do anything that’s asked of them, from kidnapping virgins for unspeakably base acts to making tea.

Like the blues, the roots of this stuff stretches back to the traditions of African slaves and their experiences in the New World. 

The Haitian criminal code, passed in 1864, officially recognised their existence: “Also shall be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made by any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the administering of such substances, the person has been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.”

Malema is perhaps to be commended for alerting us to these and other public nuisances. He is now a man of some learning, and who knows what fresh horrors lurk in our future?

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.