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LONDON — South Africa’s governing African National Congress party on Thursday ordered a five-year suspension of Julius Malema, the populist leader of its youth wing, and told him to step down for bringing the party into disrepute.
The penalty was harsher than expected, seemingly intended to sideline Malema in South Africa’s fractious political debate and shore up President Jacob Zuma’s expected bid next year for a second term.
But it also risked creating a backlash among Malema’s supporters, many of them young jobless people with no niche in the post-apartheid economy, who are drawn to his strident calls for nationalization of the mines that have enriched South Africa’s elite.
Denver Post wire services
