The ANC is playing a dangerous game with youth leader Julius Malema.

The ANC is playing a dangerous game with youth leader Julius Malema.

Motormouth has established himself as such a buffoon he can float any idea and the ANC can plausibly deny responsibility for his ravings.

That seems like a perfect ploy in an election where the ANC must satisfy mutually exclusive constituencies with its contradictory promises.

But you can't fool all the people all the time and even folks on his side of the political divide are squirming in embarrassment from Baby Julie's infantile imprecations.

Allow it to go on too long and even the ANC risks losing votes. Voters might forget the issues, but the good people of South Africa will never be able to forget the humiliation he has subjected us to.

The spirit of ubuntu still underlies much of our political discourse and unlike the Americans we demand a certain level of civilised interaction. Boy Julius appears to have grown up under a rock somewhere isolated from such social sensibilities.

Almost single-handedly he is destroying whatever common links we have built so laboriously and threatens the whole political edifice.

It's time for the ANC's elders to effect their promise of political education for its unschooled cadres and to confine Malema and his ilk somewhere they can't do any more damage.