I DON'T know if it's a revolutionary thing to do, but I like ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema. On the one occasion I spoke to him, he told me he'd trekked from Polokwane to Jozi to bury Chris Hani. That, for me, is the mark of a child soldier.

If we did not have shopping malls and escalators, Malema would be in control of the nearest bush with an AK-47 slung nonchalantly over his shoulder and a dying cigarette, or zol, dangling from his mouth.

There's something about child soldiers that gives me a high.

I know educated people are supposed to have intelligent causes and individual pet CSI projects - like taking a girl child to work. Granted, they are adorable little darlings, yes, and Lethabo will tell you how much her daddy loves her.

But in the greater scheme of things, the girl child is the least of my worries at present.

I am fascinated by the 12-year-old boy who, while his peers around the world are yearning for a new bicycle, is concerned about jumping enemy lines to claim a scalp or more.

I am talking here about the boy who, when those his age elsewhere are moving to the beat of Rihanna and Chris Brown, his only song is the rut-tut-tut of machine gun fire.

The boy after my own heart is Birahima, in Ahmadou Kourouma's 2006 novel Allah Is Not Obliged.

Birahima is 10 years old, the cover says. "He is a soldier."

Read this book and weep with me.

Each time I read up on Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and some such godforsaken hot spots, it is not about Yoweri Museveni's latest rap album, Charles Taylor's lies or the blue-est sarong Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wore to the opening of parliament.

I read the stories of children whose innocent lives were wrecked by war, like Birahima's.

As I reach for the Kleenex to wipe the intruding tear off my face, allow me to tell you about another subject very close to my heart - the apartheid (foot) soldier.

I just love these men!

They are not right in the head but I just adore them.

When apartheid came tumbling down, they had to go out and look for a new cause to believe in and die for, something a friend of mine calls a heart song.

They had to learn to sing anew.

And what do they do in this new endeavour? They go around the world in borrowed planes and huge arms caches removing and installing governments.

You may have heard about their ill-fated exploits in Equatorial Guinea.

In their foolhardy bravery, they reduce Mad Mike Hoare into a Sunday school mistress.

They shoot guns, maim lives and take no prisoners. Their hunting ground is a place like Iraq, where they sell their "expertise".

Libya is beckoning.

They are called private military consultants and they die like flies in Iraq, the DRC or wherever else they choose to operate.

Those who escape gunfire and lengthy jail terms, like Mark Thatcher and Simon Mann, go running back to mom for protection.

I'm meeting someone from this lunatic fringe on Friday.

Hold thumbs.