Ramaphosa spells trouble at the polls for DA and EFF

Jacob Zuma played a great role in the struggle but all this has been marred by his failed presidency. Zuma’s disastrous reign has finally come to an end and there is euphoric optimism about the man who has been waiting in history’s wings — Cyril

Ramaphosa.

But one of the unintended silver linings of the Zuma disaster is that it was a huge boon to opposition parties. The DA and the EFF both stormed ahead under Zuma.

Neither party has what it takes to confront the challenges of our country. The DA has not decisively broken with its white origins, and its neoliberal policies offer nothing but misery to most South Africans.

The EFF is characterised by crass opportunism, deep hypocrisy, crude misogyny, racial chauvinism and an authoritarian populism that sometimes descends into neofascist demagoguery.

But both parties have made impressive gains at the polls in recent years, with the result that electoral politics, and parliament, have been reinvigorated. This is good for our democracy. Of course the emergence of a credible alternative would be even better, but the mere fact that there is an increasingly competitive electoral sphere is a good thing.

But in recent years, the DA and the EFF have centred their strategies on opposition to Zuma. Of course it was a sure-fire strategy, but now that Zuma is out, the DA and the EFF suddenly look very shaky.

That is not just because there is a real conflict in the DA, and an extraordinary turnover of MPs within the EFF. It is because the focus on Zuma leaves both parties struggling for relevance in the post-Zuma era. The EFF’s descent into tactics often associated with fascism, namely attacks on shops, have the ring of desperation. They are also dangerous in that they legitimate the mobilisation of thuggery by political parties.

Both parties will have to develop credible visions of the future that can distinguish them from Ramaphosa’s ANC. If, as early indications show, Ramaphosa develops an anticorruption platform and stimulates economic growth, the DA will have the rug pulled out from under its feet.

The black middle classes will return to the ANC, as well as the more progressive elements among the white middle class. If Ramaphosa rebuilds a commitment to nonracialism many coloured and Indian voters, of all classes, are likely to return to the party too.

His challenge will be to marginalise or even expel corrupt and criminal elements within the ANC, as well as the ethnic and racial chauvinists. This is no small matter. If he can achieve this the DA will face a rapid decline at the polls.

Like the DA, the EFF will take a big hit. Its antics in parliament have won support from a wide range of people appalled by Zuma. But this will evaporate now. The problem for the EFF is that its toxic mixture of authoritarianism and statist economic policies — essentially amounting to the idea that everything should be nationalised — has zero chance of building economic freedom for anyone other than the party leaders and their cronies.

This is not a socialist programme, which would aim at worker control in the factories and the mines, and peasant control over the land. Socialism aims to extend democracy into the economic realm. The EFF’s statism is the direct opposite. It is a fundamentally authoritarian vision that would result in economic catastrophe.

Of course, if Ramaphosa is not able to isolate the corrupt and demagogic elements within his party, the puerile nature of the EFF’s politics will not be made clear, and the DA will retain the space to position itself as a less corrupt alternative. But the wind is now at Ramaphosa’s back and history is on his side, as are the masses of people who are deeply disgusted at Zuma’s grotesque conduct.

Politicians are never stronger than they are on their first day in office. If Ramaphosa acts decisively in his first days in office, the DA and the EFF will both take a hammering in 2019.

Its antics in parliament have won support . . . But this will evaporate now