South Africa

EFF is in a tight spot after defections and will need a tough reinvention

27 Oct 2024

The recent high-level resignations from the EFF demonstrate the consequences of mismanaging a political party. They also show what can happen when a party loses votes and momentum in an election. All of this contains lessons for other political parties about why party members need to know they could one day be a leader, why it’s bad policy to accept defectors and what happens if a party is centred on one personality.

The last six months have shown how much can change for one political party in a very short space of time.

In April, some still thought Julius Malema could be the deputy president of South Africa through a coalition with the ANC.

Instead, he now has less support than he received in 2019, less influence and fewer leaders on whom he can rely.

His deputy, Floyd Shivambu, has defected to MK, Mzwanele Manyi has gone there too, former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane resigned to “rest” and then joined MK, and Fana Mokoena has left both his parliamentary seat and the party for no publicly stated reason.

While it is tempting to blame the rise of MK for this, the truth is that the seeds of some of these developments were sown some time ago.

First, this is a lesson on why accepting high-profile people and then allowing them to jump the queue into representative positions (and parliamentary seats) was always going to be damaging in the long run.

In almost every case, such a person seeking a position as an MP cannot be trusted — it is clear they are not a long-term player.

Worse, by promoting them above other party members you send a message that the work done by those members doesn’t matter.

After a period in which Malema welcomed Manyi, then Carl Niehaus and then Mkhwebane into his fold, he is now left only with Niehaus, who claims he will never leave the party.

However, Niehaus is a fraud and a liar and cannot be trusted.

It was always foreseeable that Manyi and Mkhwebane would not stay in the EFF.

Manyi said he was representing the EFF in Parliament while remaining the spokesperson of the Jacob Zuma Foundation. This made him de facto Zuma’s spokesperson (until the public formation of MK).

This was always absurd, in a way that only Manyi can be.

It was never going to last.

In Mkhwebane’s case, her loyalties always appeared to lie with Zuma. Certainly, her actions in office as Public Protector point to that.

There is a lesson for everyone in her example.

No party should accept that one of their public representatives is married to the public representative of another party. While some may say someone’s personal life is not a public matter, the fact is that in politics, it is impossible to trust a person to represent you if they are legally joined to someone who represents another party.

The example of Mkhwebane representing the EFF and David Skosana representing MK in the same Parliament may never be repeated.

Self-harm

While the EFF is made up of many members and structures, it may still be recovering from the self-harm imposed upon it by Malema himself.

It was he who decided, in what must have been a fit of pique, to expel EFF members for the crime of not bringing enough buses and supporters to the FNB Stadium for the party’s tenth-anniversary celebrations last year.

The decision, which led to the removal of around 10% of its public office-bearers (that’s 210 people), was a strong message to EFF members that they must never hold the ambition of being the leader.

Perhaps the biggest problem that the EFF faces is that it has not been able to build up relationships of trust among its top leadership.

The spectacular breakdown in what once appeared to be the unshakeable bond between Shivambu and Malema would be difficult enough for many political parties to survive.

For the EFF to now suffer these other losses, accompanied by the drop in support in the elections, suggests that it is now in a very challenging place.

Of course, it’s too early to write off the EFF, or Malema, just yet.

In the long history of democracies, many political parties have suffered extraordinary losses and defeats, only to come back over a long period of time.

And our politics has shown that it can still produce shocks.

Just as MK was able to win more than 14% of the national vote this year (and 45% in KwaZulu-Natal) after publicly launching only in December last year, it could dissolve and fade just as quickly.

It appears to be making many of the same mistakes as the EFF.

Its leader, Zuma, has drafted a constitution that gives him ultimate power over every single decision in the party. He has completely ruled out party conferences, which means that there is no prospect for people to advance without fully relying on him.

Race to the bottom

If Malema continues on his path, the EFF and MK may well engage in a race to the bottom, spurred by the undemocratic practices of their leaders.

That said, should MK disappear and the EFF survive, there may be a way for the EFF to regain its momentum.

The scale of this task should not be underestimated.

The DA’s share of the vote dropped by 1% in the 2019 election and it regained that in this last election.

That was after a long five-year period in which it changed its leadership, crafted a different message and spent a huge amount of money.

Crucially, the EFF may need to find a new message to prove to voters that it has a reason to exist.

In short, in what is becoming a crowded field, the EFF has to show that it has a purpose.

Then it would have to spend time and energy on ensuring that local structures on the ground are replicating that purpose.

Crucially, the party may need to move away from the public spectaculars and towards a more careful strategy focusing on getting voters to the ballot boxes.

It is worth noting that while the DA has held big public events, it has never come close to the scale of the EFF’s birthday event at the FNB Stadium last year. And the EFF has never come close to the number of votes that the DA has won in an election.

While it is possible for the EFF to regain its lost support, it would require a big change in strategy and a huge shift in leadership style.

Which is what makes such a recovery unlikely. DM

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South Africa

Self-harm

Race to the bottom