EDITORIAL: EFF’s theatre of desperation

The EFF’s sabre-rattling ahead of Monday’s planned national stayaway might have suggested a Shakespearean showdown was in the offing between Julius Malema’s acolytes and the crime-fighting apparatus of President Cyril Ramaphosa. In the end, it ended up as a mild, locally flavoured variant of that well-loved comedy Much Ado About Nothing.

Fearing any tinder that might result in a repeat of the July 2021 riots, government ministers were on the ball. The police were briefed and actually present in hotspot communities across the country. Ramaphosa even deployed the army, such was the hype created by Malema’s party, which had warned that any business open on the day would be looted. 

Some took this seriously. Car dealerships in some areas emptied their sales floors; Toyota and other companies announced that they would not be open on March 20, a day before the public holiday that is Human Rights Day. 

For all its war talk, and the thousands of tyres placed in strategic locations discovered by community policing forums and removed, the day fizzled out to nothing more than a handful of running battles with the police in some areas, and millions in misspent taxpayer money to deploy the army at a moment’s notice. 

So did the government overreact? Not necessarily. Malema’s party is frequently something of a micro-dictatorship, channelling Hitler’s brownshirt thugs in temperament. The fire and brimstone was, ostensibly, meant to be a protest against the electricity crisis and joblessness, but with a dash of “Ramaphosa must fall” thrown in. 

Crucially, Malema and his minions didn’t even pay lip service to the notion of peaceful protest, warning a week ago that no critical infrastructure would be off-limits when his party took to the streets. It may have been a day when many businesses and most schools would have been closed anyway, before the public holiday. But the ferocity of the threat couldn’t be gainsaid.

Companies, opposition parties and the ANC itself reacted nervously. The DA went to court to get the protest scrapped and ultimately failed, even if it did result in a trite court order that simply repeated that the protest couldn’t involve anything illegal.

Speaking after the small and largely peaceful protest, the EFF claimed it had been a success. Still, experts believe the overblown war talk and intimidation tactics are likely to backfire on the party when the time comes to vote next year.

The EFF often resembles a party of aloof student leaders, entirely removed from the deep challenges faced by communities daily. These realities — four-year-olds dying in pit toilets, drug-ravaged communities, clinics unable to provide basic care, toddlers playing in the filth in dusty parks — aren’t on display in the EFF’s theatre-laced revenge politics pantomime against the ANC. 

The EFF seems to be dimly aware of this, which is why, for the first time in its 10-year existence, it has embarked on a campaign to clean up communities, black bags and broomsticks in hand. It is beginning to realise this is what it needs if it wants to break above the 10% electoral support ceiling. This palpable desperation was on display in the EFF’s tactics of intimidation last week — a desperation to ensure people finally listen to what it is saying.

Still, the fact that the protest happened, and mostly went off peacefully, reaffirms our democracy — albeit one that has got us used to having everything go wrong at the last minute. And for the government, this was at least a successful dry run of its ability to quell an uprising at some point — suggesting it may have learnt a lot since the July 2021 debacle.