Julius Malema is our democratic experiment’s existential threat
And be reassured: the EFF is not as united as the public might be made to think
Let us be clear. EFF leader Julius Malema is our democratic experiment’s existential threat. Never mind his hyperbole, penchant for name dropping and gossip peddling during his media briefings, Malema is a destructive force intent on waging an asymmetric assault on the edifices of our democracy in order to advance his narrow political ends. Let me explain.
We are in a critical era of our democratic experiment when it comes to electoral, voter and civic maturity. While analysts compete to identify topical schisms of the age, and social media platforms provide extreme, outlandish, and divisive views greater visibility and amplification, we should not fail to see the wood from the trees.
Facts matter. Facts about the most consequential election since the advent of our democratic order matter even more.
More than 12,2 million South Africans voted in the 2021 local government elections. That was the lowest voter turnout in our history and the first time the ANC attained less than 50% of the total votes cast.
With the elections now essentially settled, it is important to reiterate an ancient altruism that numbers reveal the true state of our world. All top 3 parties - namely ANC, DA and EFF - shed votes, just under 4,2 million votes in total. While the EFF improved the nominal percentage of the votes it received from around 8% to just over 10%, the organisation polled fewer votes this election cycle than it did in the previous local government elections. Therefore in real terms, the EFF performed worse than it did the last time. This fact did not deter EFF leaders from embarking on “victory tours” and spinning a big yarn.
So what happens next? No one really knows. The ensuing negotiations should become like a mini poker game, with the various players — particularly the presumed partnership leaders the DA — eyeing one another’s pile of chips and trying to figure out who is bluffing and who is ready to go all in and call the other’s bluff. All we can do for now is go around the table and try to read everyone’s eyes. Except, of course, the EFF’s eyes are bloodshot red. And they can almost smell victory.
Having the power to put a spanner in the works has paid very well for a Machiavellian Malema and his EFF in the past. He was, reportedly, able to leverage his political influence to extract perverse financial benefits for entities and individuals within his patronage system from then DA Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba. In his mind, the perverse incentives behind the fragile ‘smash and grab’ coalition governments wave offer yet another opportunity to exert outsized political influence beyond what the voters had originally intended.
Lest reality becomes a blind taste test when it comes to the ensuing partnership negotiations between Action SA, the DA and EFF , the Thomas Sankara wannabes in red onesies should not be allowed to capitalize on Mashaba’s political ignorance nor the DA’s intemperate negotiation tactics to eke out outsized concessions.
It has been 12 days since secret ballot-wielding and scheming EFF councillors descended on hung municipal councils countrywide with instructions from their autocratic leader to vote for the DA, a party they have little, if anything, politically in common with. The DA is yet to announce members of its mayoral committees in Gauteng metros as talks with Action SA have, reportedly, stalled with Mashaba publicly accusing the DA of not taking him seriously. The two parties had met on Monday to discuss MMCs in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni metros.
If talks between Action SA and the DA have, as reported, hit a snag, one shudders to think how negotiations with the EFF, the brains behind the “vat en sit” arrangement, will go. It would not be surprising if Action SA and the EFF overplayed their hand in the mistaken belief that the DA would be desperate for a likely fractious relationship at all cost.
And that is why we now see Malema craning his neck to see if he can figure out what cards and chips the DA will play next. Negotiations between the two will likely be the most strenuous, if not tumultuous, during this interregnum. EFF negotiators will likely be out to prove that they can get a better deal than their supposedly “wimpy” lapdogs in Action SA. And they certainly have more chips, in the form of political experience and megaphones, to play with now that the DA has tacitly agreed to work with them.
In the end analysis, the outcome of any discussion between the parties is far from guaranteed.
Malema has been consistently inconsistent with his pronouncement regarding when, where and how the EFF seeks to partake in municipalities where it may have earned the nod for mayoral or speakership seats. One thing is clear though. To its credit, the EFF is sticking to its position of not working with the ANC even in instances that this could be to its, especially its councillors’, long term benefit. Malema wasted no time instructing the EFF first mayor in Metsimaholo municipality in the Free State to resign with immediate effect as the party rejected working with the ANC.
An incorrigible sociopathic narcissist, Malema’s personal vendetta against Ramaphosa and his unbridled ambitions for high office, seem to have replaced his party’s political strategy to gain the necessary experience for later use in the event that it prevails in future elections.
For a political party whose leadership seems armed only with a strategy for marginalising the ANC, in fact launching an asymmetric political warfare against ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa with the hope of dislodging him from leadership of his party, the EFF seems to lack a coherent vision for its future governance of the municipalities, never mind the country.
Counterintuitive as this may sound, this could also be one of the reasons it ordered Selloane Motjeane, its elected mayor of Metsimaholo, to tender her resignation despite the crucial experience she would have gained serving in that position. Some cynics believe that Malema doesn’t really wish upward political mobility for anyone in his political nest.
The EFF’s, or should I say Malema’s, decision to force the DA into an incredulous “vat en sit” arrangement, as bad as the EFF abstention from voting in a new council would have been, was one of the worst tactical moves undertaken in local politics.
Malema’s descent into authoritarianism is complete. It has now become abundantly clear that he is not anchored in any political philosophy. The EFF and his acolytes are tethered to his political whims. Otherwise, how else could one rationalise his decision to support the DA which had publicly accused Malema and the EFF of corruption?
A wily leader that he is, Malema placated the DA and the FF Plus by accusing these parties of racism for refusing to work with the EFF. This seems to have worked. At least so far.
Malema unashamedly gifted quasi-liberal white racists a golden opportunity to continue in their arrogant belief, as Steve Biko eloquently put it, that “white leadership is a sine qua non in this country and that whites are the divinely appointed pace-setters in progress.” But at this rate, this seems to matter less considering that voters have made it clear of their disaffection with the ANC’s poor service delivery record.
This decision alone, especially considering the fact that the EFF and DA are ideologically poles apart, has not gone unnoticed with the EFF ranks.
And be reassured: the EFF is not as united as the public might be made to think. Beneath the public display of unity of purpose and veneer of the highest purpose undergirding Malema’s decisions, the discord within the party is brewing out in the open. There is clearly no consensus, at least within its membership, about how the EFF leadership decided to expend the votes and seats it won during the elections. Some aggrieved EFF members have torched their T-shirts on live TV, while some prominent legal socialites have even questioned Malema’s unilateralism on social media, to the bemusement of their giddy opponents.
Evidently, Malema has already succeeded in stoking the embers of internal ANC turmoil that could precipitate Ramaphosa’s ouster, but he could still fail in his efforts to exert outsized influence on the DA. In which case, thanks to Malema’s pursuit of his self-serving agenda, SA could still find itselfs back to where it was on November 1 with respect to hung councils in key metros.
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