ELIAS PHAAHLA: Julius Malema should fall on his sword after EFF’s spectacular fail

While there is no doubt that the ANC was badly wounded in the 2024 general election battle, the EFF by no means emerged unscathed. Its performance can best be described as irredeemably lacklustre.

In fact, May 29 can be said to have exposed the real fractures that have plagued it for some time, along with other SA political parties. A realignment of the SA political landscape was inevitable. 

The EFF’s political ascendancy in 2013, catapulted by its radical far left political message, rapidly gained it a significant following as the electorate started to question SA’s viability as a constitutional democracy.

At the time, any suggestion that one day we would question its future as a stable political party and player to be reckoned with would have seemed utterly misguided. It had all the makings of a governing party in waiting, primed to wrestle power from the ANC, which it accused of having reneged on its promise of a radical economic transformation.

But now the once ferocious party led by its firebrand commander-in-chief Julius Malema seems to have run out of steam, plagued as it is by a litany of scandals. The VBS Mutual Bank saga in particular continues to paint EFF party leaders, especially Malema and his erstwhile right-hand man, Floyd Shivambu, in a questionable light.

This on top of the resignations of the likes of Mzwanele Manyi, who left the EFF for the MK party as soon as the latter was formed in the lead up to the May elections, and simmering conflict among the party leadership. 

Like Manyi, Shivambu has now defected to Jacob Zuma’s MK party, making apparent the deep infighting within the upper echelons of the EFF and leaving a major leadership vacuum that will make it difficult for Malema to hold things together.

While the relationship between the two has always been adversarial, it called for a degree of tolerance in the interest of the party, which they tried very hard to keep united.

Malema’s strength lies in the oratory of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s variety, vital for wooing the crowd, while Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the party’s former official spokesperson, possesses charm and relatability with the party’s youth. Shivambu boasted a command of economic history and policy, which cast him as the brains behind the party’s political and economic message.

Now that he is gone it is hard to see how the current leadership will hold the fort, despite the fact that he never enjoyed the popularity of Malema, who has overshadowed him ever since the party’s rise to political prominence. 

Looking back at the EFF’s performance during the May 2024 elections, it is not hard to see how the lack of unity between the party’s leadership might have contributed to its significantly reduced electoral support. Constant bickering resulted in them dropping the ball and failing to read the political weather, so much so that its electoral pitch remained largely out of sync with the aspirations and wishes of its support base.

For example, Malema’s intransigence around immigration and his insistence on an open border policy was propagated without the support of most within the EFF leadership, including Shivambu. The former EFF deputy president studiously avoided expressing pro-immigration views on public platforms, revealing the chasm between his own politics and those of his leader on that issue.

I would not be surprised to learn that Shivambu, ever the political strategist, warned Malema against expressing such pro-immigration views too openly, not least because it had become a sensitive topic among the populace given the economic climate. Many poor South Africans feel betrayed by Malema’s apparent lack of sympathy for their economic plight.

To say that the immigration issue cost the party dearly in the elections would be an understatement — it resulted in electoral humiliation that saw it slipping to the fourth most popular political party, behind the newly formed MK party. The EFF took nearly 19% of the votes in the 2019 elections and has now plummeted to less than 10%.

Whenever the EFF hosts rallies that are poorly attended, Malema is in the habit of hauling the party organiser over the coals before releasing them from duty most discourteously, as if they were armed with a magic wand with the power to fill stadiums on a whim.

By rights, it should be Malema’s turn to fall on his own sword for failing to listen to his voters. But that won’t happen. Malema considers himself beyond reproach, bigger than the party itself. As a result, resentment will continue to bubble under the surface in the party. Eventually there will be an explosion that will result in its demise.

Meanwhile, the descent has begun and the writing is on the wall. We must brace ourselves for a political showdown as the country’s inevitable political realignment continues.

• Phaahla is professor of politics and international relations at the University of Johannesburg and sits on the board of Institute for Global Dialogue.