Interesting times ahead if EFF goes to Parliament

THE launch of another political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), has naturally elicited comment from many quarters. The controversial image its founding leader, Julius Malema, created for himself while president of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League caused many to speculate about the possible effect its founding will have on the ANC’s electoral fortunes, in what many predict will be hotly contested elections next year, which some say could be as decisive as 1994 in redefining the political landscape.

The EFF chose Marikana, the site of the first post-apartheid massacre by police, for its launch to underscore its core message: the ANC has abandoned the African working poor, who were once its core constituency, and the ANC government even instructs the police to shoot them when they raise their voices. Next year’s elections will tell us how credible the electorate finds that message.

Political commentators, political opponents and pundits who wish the ANC ill rubbed their hands in glee at the prospect of the ANC’s electoral strength being undermined by the EFF. This happened in 1996, when Bantu Holomisa founded the United Democratic Movement (UDM), and again when Mosiuoa Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa founded the Congress of the People (COPE) in 2008. Both these, like the EFF, were made up of ANC dissidents. The founding of Agang SA, inspired by former Black

‘Along with George Bush, Lekota shares the distinction of being a president installed in office by the courts’

Consciousness figure Mamphela Ramphele, was greeted with the same enthusiasm.

The jury on the negative effect of the UDM and COPE on the ANC has been in for some years now. While the manner in which Holomisa parted company with the ANC left some residual empathy for him among ANC members and supporters, he was unable to find much support beyond his native Eastern Cape. Few ANC members left with him.

COPE’s founders, on the other hand, walked out of the ANC with a substantial body of former members, but have been unable to convene even an inaugural conference to elect its leadership. The face of COPE’s 2009 electoral campaign was the unfortunate Mvume Dandala, a very decent man but by no means a political heavyweight, because its two high-profile founders both wanted the mantle of leadership.

Along with George Bush, Lekota shares the singular distinction of being a president installed in office by the courts.

With no sense of irony, the ANC’s critics on the right suggest that the EFF’s accusation that the ANC has let the side down by neither nationalising the mines, nor carrying out radical land reform and by pursuing a policy of reconciliation that is not being reciprocated, might resonate with large numbers among the ANC’s constituency. There is even a grudging admission, unintended I am sure, among some that what Malema is saying will ring true in the ears of many. Sampie Terreblanche, listed as a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond by Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom, the authors of The Super-Afrikaners, alleges that the ANC leadership, or at least a decisive fraction within it, were bought off at a secret meeting with the corporate elite before the 1994 elections. According to Terreblanche, at that meeting, the ANC was talked into abandoning the social-democratic elements of its political programme in preference for the Washington-imposed neoliberal agenda. The deepening poverty of the African working poor, says Terreblanche, is the outcome of that shoddy compromise.

These are the accents in which many on the political left have charged the ANC with being a sellout. One hears them repeated by former members of the South African Communist Party and less effective Marxist propaganda groups.

One could speculate about the possibility of the EFF becoming the shared political home of all such left-sounding political critics. Holomisa has already positioned himself close to the EFF, probably in the hope of forging a political pact to fight next year’s elections. Malema’s threat to begin organising unions at a moment when the Congress of South African Trade Unions is tearing itself apart over the sexual peccadilloes of its general secretary has been received like political manna from heaven in certain quarters because of the harmful effect it could have on the ANC’s electoral performance. But it is doubtful that critics who regard themselves as socialists will flock to the EFF.

The EFF poses an interesting dilemma, especially for those of the ANC’s critics who hate it for destroying the white minority’s monopoly on political power. The EFF speaks of the seizure of the economic assets, especially land, now owned by whites, without compensation. If, as seems likely, the EFF wins a seat in the next Parliament, SA can look forward to an interesting five years. An ANC facing an effective opposition to its left might opt for more radical policies, realigning South African politics in directions that few will have anticipated.

Jordan is a former arts and culture minister.