Handful of rowdy EFF MPs upstage president and ANC
No South African president has been stripped naked and humiliated by an opposition party as President Jacob Zuma has been by the EFF.
The party, a new entrant to the political scene with only 25 MPs but a significant youth following, has been ably led by firebrand Julius Malema, Zuma’s former ally.
It sounds unbelievable that only a handful of EFF parliamentarians had elicited a deployment of 441 soldiers to “help maintain law and order” in the Mother City.
The deployment smacked of panic, fear and paranoia. The emperor was rendered naked once again on Thursday night as has become traditional whenever the president addresses Parliament.
The EFF vowed ahead of the event to redeploy the most powerful weapon in its arsenal and Zuma’s Achilles heel — the Constitutional Court judgment on his Nkandla homestead.
The EFF danced into the house in their red overalls and red T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Fear Nothing” back and front, drawing a line in the sand before the many members of Parliament’s security detail around the House.
They kept their word and delayed Zuma’s address for more than an hour, raising many points of order, and saying that the president had lost legitimacy and credibility.
The EFF members took the opportunity, as they have done since joining Parliament, of using television prime time to call for Zuma to step down.
They were dramatically hauled out, but not before emptying water bottles on the security staff manhandling them.
The EFF members called Zuma names before being told to leave the House. They called him a scoundrel, a “constitutional delinquent”, rotten to the core and an illegitimate president.
The majority of the ANC MPs looked on in awe and disdain as their revered leader was stripped naked by a handful of their young EFF counterparts.
Such was the influence of the 6% party, that it drove a 62% ruling party to organise a rally in a show of support for its president near Parliament. Zuma was due to address the rally at the time of going to press.
It was to be expected that a more formidable foe would be needed to outwit an ANC leader whose Machiavellian ability has thus far been unmatched. The EFF’s electoral support failed to climb as it had expected in the 2016 polls, although its role as kingmaker dealt a devastating blow to the ANC, resulting in the loss of the prized Gauteng metros of Johannesburg and Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape.
Still, since 2014, Zuma appeared weakest and most flustered when confronted with red-overall clad thirtysomethings from the EFF. The party has become the “fly that won’t go away” for the ruling party.
The EFF leader’s obsession with getting even with the party that expelled him a few years ago has exposed a weak point in the ruling party.
Far from showing the government’s might, the extraordinary security measures of barricading the elite into an enclave away from the hustle and bustle of South African life, showed the opposite — that the fledgling party posed a real threat to the 105-year-old ANC.
The EFF’s radical economic agenda is also influencing ANC policy making — with the ruling party vowing to tackle the land question with renewed vigour. This is despite the fact that it had 22 years to deliver on pledges.
The ANC has also brought out and dusted off its economic transformation policy and is now calling for radical economic transformation — a policy the EFF has made its own.
The ideas informing the EFF’s seven-point plan are rooted in the economic freedom policy platform pushed for by its founding leaders while they were still part of the ANC fold.
These ideas were resisted by the ANC at the time.
EFF leader Julius Malema has weighed in on this, warning about a possible play by Zuma for a third term as ANC president — a move which could strengthen the fledgling party, should Malema’s premonition prove to be true.
Last night, Zuma addressed mostly ANC MPs after the DA, COPE and the FF Plus walked out shortly after the EFF were ejected.
Their targeting of Zuma’s obvious weaknesses seem to be paying dividends for the EFF. Painting Zuma as the gaffeprone, scandalous leader has elevated the party’s stature in the public mind.
In fact, the EFF’s policies have not provided it with as much traction as its fight against Zuma. And by rallying around and defending him, the ruling party has taken the bait to the EFF’s advantage.
The president is the EFF’s greatest enemy. But he is also its greatest aggrandiser.