In a previous blog I gave some tips on how the public diplomacy division in the foreign affairs department should go about during their public relations exercises. Boy, are they going to need these and many more after the multimillion dollar anti-imperialist youth festival started in Pretoria this week.

Or will the event just pass everyone by, despite the humungous cost, because we have come to expect such exasperations from SA?

I am all for anti-imperialism. Imperialism sucks. Actually we are all anti-imperialists. Even businessmen are. After the financial crisis we are all against American capitalists steamrollering over us and exploiting us for our resources only. Money being spirited away for the benefit of the Bernie Madoffs of the world, or the US government’s own Ponzi schemes, is not good business, not for locals anyway.

Even the most kneejerk of capitalist apologists recognise that governments have a key role to play in the continuous standoff between global empire-building multinationals and ordinary people. We live in the era when even tax collectors are anti-imperialists.

What we have today is not a single empire, but manifestations of empire that have no limit in space and time anymore. The boss of BHP Billiton is a South African; Chinese state enterprises send agents to get MBAs in America or to steal plans they can copy to the last signature on the blueprint. China is America’s banker; America the Communist Party’s biggest outsourcing client.

The Soviet empire collapsed spectacularly, but its remnants kick on in Vladimir Putin’s KGB-led oligopoly. That he does not have to be the head of state to be in control is one of many simultaneous models of how empire works. Dick Cheney served two masters, going by George W Bush’s memoirs, and it is not clear at all that the war congolemerate Halliburton played second fiddle.

In this schizoid condition, where we all are rebels and masters at the same time, the loudest shouters against imperialism often are the most imperialist. Kim jong-il, recently lionised by Julius Malema, is a North Korean imperialist, even if most of his empire exists in his imagination (with Playstation empire doesn’t have to exist elsewhere).

We know now that Julius Malema is building his own empire, and likes to hobnob with American imperialists, possibly may even be a secret WikiLeaks-proof agent. He admitted as much when he said he had no problems with Fifa’s imperialist activities during the World Cup.

But most anti-imperialist imperialists know how to hide their schizophrenia, or build nuclear missiles as a screen. Not our South African lot.

Foreign media should be licking their lips over this windfall just when the silly season starts. Just the basic facts are already cause for mirth and hilarity – the imperialistic amounts to be splurged, the imperialistic scale of the slogans, the imperialistic arrogance in all the sweeping resolutions.

How will our under-resourced foreign affairs department handle  it all? If they had a clue, we are not seeing any sign of it. We should  be having furious spin and PR contortions by now. Instead our foreign minister has been told to complain to Hillary Clinton about WikiLeaks.

Will Ms Clinton be annoyed, sitting there po-faced? Not that we’ll know, for by now she would have probably had several rehearsals with her diplomats to practice not putting her hand over her mouth and guffawing ­- like when last as a kid watching MASH, or some such imperialist rubbish.