Major winner in this is Julius Malema’s EFF
INVARIABLY, when South Africans are faced with events of national magnitude, we allow our prejudices to influence the debate, but as the dust settles on the implosion of the ANC in the local government elections, it is opportune to take our partisan hats off and analyse a seismic event.
Claims by some pundits that the electorate has matured and moved away from a race-based paradigm is misleading as it is the black voters who have shifted their allegiances in droves.
The average white voter has always retained their rigid allegiance and has been hugely rewarded with the control of key metro councils and other previously ANC strongholds.
Arguably, the major winner is Julius Malema’s EFF which, although achieving less than a 10 percent result nationally, has become the prime influential kingmaker by collaborating with and propelling the DA into prominence.
If, as the coalition party spinners would have us believe, the electorate has solidly rejected the ANC and voted for change, then the EFF with its minority vote has in reality been blown away by those voters.
And it could justifiably be said that the DA has similarly been soundly rejected by also not achieving that magical 51 percent majority in the hung councils and only achieving an overall 30 percent vote nationally.
Nevertheless, politics is a notoriously grubby industry which attracts a plethora of seedy practitioners and the resultant reality can often be mystifying and even obnoxious.
Without a shadow of doubt, Malema will be a future South African president. He has the sheer ambition, charisma, magnetism and aggressive street-fighter persona, and time is very much on his side. Providing he doesn’t overdo his bombastic politicking, his star should continue to rise.
His brazen chicanery could yet be his downfall though. It was a master stroke to collude with the menagerie of 1 percenter Mickey Mouse parties to propel what he called “the racist white-led DA” into power in several hung councils and then to cleverly avoid any accusations of being an African sell-out, by refusing to officially join the coalitions.
The EFF may not be in open coalition with the DA but “if you put lipstick on a pig, it remains a pig”. By remaining on opposition benches, Malema can continue to build his struggle credentials against so-called capitalistic exploitation as a people’s champion, and snipe at the coalition administrations to undermine their credibility.
It can also be termed running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
Few will sympathise with the ANC’s dramatic demise. They have grown increasingly arrogant through extreme length of time in office.
Although it is ridiculous to dismiss the many achievements of the ANC and demonise them as devils incarnate, as many gloating opposition parties are doing, the former liberation movement has contributed to its own impending death throes by its draconian antics in Parliament, employing strong-arm yobos to throw people out of the House.
Its obstinate clinging to the hated urban toll-road system, the failure to curb mass corruption in its ranks and stubbornly being loyal to the big dancing elephant in the room, President Jacob Zuma.
Sadly, he will be remembered as the one who finally squeezed the life out of a once iconic party. The struggle ancestors must be spinning in their graves.
Interesting times lie ahead and we all hope that the politicians put our country first and don’t allow selfish interest to predominate.
Let the games begin and may the best party triumph. Azania Mboya