Julius Malema and his Wild Bunch are shuffling deckchairs on the EFF Titanic

There is no truth to the rumour that there is a sequel to the film Man on Fire in the works to adequately capture the apparent decline of Julius Malema. Rumour has it that producers are arguing over the name of a potential sequel, and about who would be the best box-office star. Rumours have a life of their own.

Among the titles that were thrown around by producers and funders were previously used titles like: Man Alone, One Foot in Hell and High Noon. Uncommon Valour was laughed out of the room. Gunfight at OK Bazaars was dismissed because it may encounter copyright problems – as well as it being a bit cheesy. Poseidon Adventure was a strong contender, because there were only a few survivors in the original productions. A Small Circle of Friends was suggested, but there was bickering about how small “small” was.

After several days of bickering, there was some agreement that Good Bye, Lenin! would be a good name. That was before someone suggested The Wild Bunch…

The Malema storyline was fairly straightforward. Malema led the EFF into 2024 like a man on fire. He was tied to Floyd Shivambu; they were The Defiant Ones. No, they were not like Spies Are Us. That was a comedy of two bumbling wannabees. Given their superior logic, they would complain if the producers and marketing people decided on Dumb and Dumber.

My opinion is that they were, definitely, not like The Blues Brothers, but as The Dude would have said: “Yeah, well, that’s just like, your opinion, man.”

Anyway, Shivambu left Malema behind, made like Papillon and escaped from Devil’s Island. The bedraggled leader is now dragging the EFF into December. “It has been a painful year, we are not closing it with a bang,” Malema has said.

In the meantime, everyone in the movement is Waiting to Exhale.

Some are waiting in the wings and watching Wall Street, Greed, The Big Short over and over again. They are dedicated to change, but the type of change imagined by Luchino Visconti’s character, Tancredi Franconeri, in The Leopard (based on the book) when he said “everything must change for everything to remain the same”.

A wizened producer, hung over and flatulent from late-night fava beans and chianti, asked whether Malema had said anything in the past that could inspire a working title.

“Chaos,” someone replied.

Yes, someone else said. “We could also use The Dark Knight… remember how The Joker said: “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos.”

We can’t use the word “dark” in the title, someone else said.

Funders wanted to know more about a possible elision of Good Bye, Lenin! and The Wild Bunch. One of my friends who was sat at the back of the room thought the original (Good Bye Lenin!) hit the mark, and that it may be worth a remake, adding that The Wild Bunch was (similarly) apposite.

Yes, added yet another person, “it does seem true that the EFF are more like Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, that miserable bunch of ideologically lost bandits trying to find a way to survive in a new era.”

She explained how Peckinpah’s original film celebrated “honour among thieves” (until there was more money to be made elsewhere), and even romanticised the bandits. It showed, also, how their code of ethics was being challenged by a world that was changing around them. A little, and a lot like Good Bye Lenin! they don’t seem to grasp, or even see, the changes around them.

Someone pulled out a quote about The Wild Bunch: “The land had changed. They hadn’t. The earth had cooled. They couldn’t.”

Someone else added: “When you side with a man, you stay with him!”

Where was that quote from, someone asked: “Not sure,” came the reply. “It had something to do with The Wild Bunch, and fits nicely with Malema’s claims about deception, dishonesty and disloyal comrades”.

There were smiles all around.

Someone turned to an internet search engine and read extracts of a review: The Wild Bunch was about “... a collection of stupid brutish men” endowed with “a spurious glamour...”. Their violence is “horrifying as well as strangely fascinating [and] infused with a false romanticism”.

One of the funders asked questions about “bankable stars”. Who would play Julius Malema? Floyd Shivambu? Christopher Mpofu? Busisiwe Mkhwebane? Quintin Ndlozi?

Out of left field, someone asked why the names “Christopher” and “Quintin” were used. A voice replied, “I thought that we used ‘Jamnandas’ for Pravin Gordhan to be loyal to the name his mother gave him.”

Things were starting to get heated. From the head of the table, came the Pavlovian: “High morale. High Discipline!” Everyone went quietly into performative contemplation, two fingers to the temple.

Someone whispered that a bearded Oliver Reed could play Carl Niehaus.

“He is dead.”

A sincere voice asked: “Who, Carl?”

The funders called for a meeting in camera.

… And so, as South Africans prepare to leave the world behind – never mind the outcome of deliberations about The Wild Bunch: The Story of the EFF – there are signs that Malema and the remaining retinue of romantic revolutionaries are running out of force.

Perhaps the single most important factor that killed the flames of Malema Man on Fire at the start of the year was the return of Jacob Zuma, The Terminator. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, Zuma was “crushed” when he was dumped in 2005, but rose again four years later when he became president of the country in 2009.

He was “crushed” again when he was asked to leave the Presidency in 2018, and rose yet again at the head of the MK party in 2024. (A biopic of the former president would probably be “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Jacob Zuma”.)

Zuma’s MK party replaced the EFF as the populist opposition to the ANC. Zuma’s party now represents many of the ideas that the EFF has held most dearly, and that ANC backbenchers would adopt for pecuniary gain post-haste. He will, probably, drain the ANC of members and “take back” the old liberation movement, reportedly to honour his ancestors.

Should he succeed, Zuma would effectively return the ANC to what it represented over the first two decades of democracy. It was during that period when Malema was expelled from the ANC, where he was considered to be too radical/outspoken/reckless/irresponsible, and which eventually led to the formation of The Wild Bunch.

If the elections of last May showed that the electorate had little stomach for the Marxist-Leninist revolutionism that the EFF proudly represented, voters still considered nativism, ethno-nationalism and everything that Zuma stood for as appealing. This combination probably accounted for the EFF’s poor performance in the poll.

Beyond that, the EFF as The Wild Bunch is forced to confront history. All the beliefs, ideas, tactics and strategies that brought it together in the first place are losing credibility.

Surely if the electorate wanted a Marxist-Leninist government they would have elected a Marxist-Leninist political party. Also, their particular brand of violent rhetoric, stochastic terror and fear-mongering has been adopted by MK.

If, within the coming months, the EFF succumbs to the fate that ended The Wild Bunch’s reign – death of the party without the violence – the biggest questions would be these: what happens to Malema/Zuma? Would Malema accept a deputy leadership and take instructions from someone else? DM