EFF will ditch loose pacts, says Malema
• Party to seek active participation in governance in 2019, says Malema
The EFF will enter fully fledged coalitions in 2019, says leader Julius Malema. The party will ditch the loose, co-operation pacts that helped propel the DA to power in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay and will instead opt for active participation in governance come 2019, Malema told Business Day during an interview.
The EFF will enter fully fledged coalitions in 2019, says leader Julius Malema.
The party would ditch the loose, co-operation pacts which had helped propel the DA to power in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay and would instead opt for active participation in governance come 2019, Malema told Business Day during an interview.
In 2016, the EFF contested its first local government elections and got 8.3%. It won 6.3% of the vote when it contested the 2014 general elections when the party burst onto the scene.
Malema said 2019 would usher in a new era of coalition politics. The EFF will not play kingmaker, but wanted to become a partner and a “significant player” going forward.
“Every coalition we form in 2019 … we are going to participate directly in it — we are going to take departments. The good thing about provincial government is that, once you are allocated departments with clearly defined coalition terms, you say to the DA, you are running your own thing, we are running our own thing, you are not going to interfere in our departments and that’s it,” he said.
“We will do that through acceptable laws of this country and we will be compliant with whatever regulations are there.”
While critics predict the EFF is unlikely to breach the 10% mark in 2019, Malema said the fact that the party’s support base ate directly from that of the ANC meant that the governing party would be much weaker in the general election.
He is also comfortable with the slow but steady growth of the EFF since its electoral debut in 2014.
The ANC’s electoral support has been on a downward trend since 2009 and opposition parties are eyeing 2019 as another election of significant losses for the liberation movement turned governing party.
The ANC has to elect new leadership in 2017 at a time when it is being criticised by its elders for having lost its way.
The factional fight to succeed President Jacob Zuma as leader is set to weaken the ANC further, with sections of the alliance mulling contesting the elections.
Malema predicted the ANC elective conference in December 2017 would hasten the disintegration of the ruling party, bolstering opposition parties’ chances of gaining control of key provinces come 2019.
Gauteng contributes the largest chunk of the country's GDP at 33% and is the most vulnerable. Two of its largest cities — Johannesburg and Tshwane — and two local municipalities, Midvaal and Mogale City, are already under opposition control.
Ekurhuleni is on a knife edge as the coalition agreement between the ANC and the African Independent Congress, which allowed the governing party to hang on to its only metro in Gauteng, is faltering.
Independent political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi said that there were rumours of merger talks between sections of the EFF leadership and a faction of the ANC, with both parties eyeing a takeover in December and, if true, the negotiations may divide both the parties.
But Malema brushed aside talk of a coalition with the ANC.
“There is a big stumbling block, Zuma himself and … we will remember that [the ANC] didn’t remove Zuma at the time it was supposed to do so.
“The only thing I [would be] … prepared to listen to is if the ANC said Kgalema [former ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe] will become their president to come talk to us. Other than that, none of them can come talk to us.
“From a principled point of view, when you are removed as a governing party to a point where you are going around shopping for partners it means you are rejected.
“Therefore it means you have done something wrong because it’s not easy to remove a governing party,” he said.
The EFF, said Malema, would be a key player in Gauteng, Limpopo and the North West during the general election.
“I think it’s going be the most stable period because everyone is going to be expected to pull up their socks and prove to South Africans that I can do better than anyone,” he said.
The EFF’s seven-pillars would also be nonnegotiable in formulating any coalition agreements. However, Malema said that the party’s policy proposals were no longer on the fringes and had taken centre stage, including land and economic freedom.
“There is no [party] who says they are impossible. They are now saying, ‘well we can do them, not this way but that way’. Good, let’s talk about the land and what we do with the land.”
Matshiqi agreed that an era of coalition politics was upon SA.
While it is not ideal to compare local and national elections, the 2014 poll had “prefigured” the 2016 election, indicating a pattern in trends, including the ANC’s decline.
There was a possibility the ANC would lose Gauteng in 2019 with no political party winning outright, opening the way for either pre-election pacts or coalition agreements.