SHIVAMBU OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Why the EFF’s ‘smart guy’ could be finance minister after the election
You don’t need an economics degree to know that a finance ministry led by the EFF’s Floyd Shivambu is a bonkers idea. Even before he walks into the National Treasury, the rand would collapse. Anyone at the Treasury who understands the idea of balancing a budget would be shown the door. Remember, Shivambu belongs to the party that intends to increase old-age grants from R2,090 to R4,180. Overnight. Just like that.
It is the same party whose leader, Julius Malema, said three weeks ago to “poor people”: “Comrades, make children. I will pay for it. We will double child social grants from R510 to R1,020. Our children deserve better. Please don’t be lazy. Make children.”
Don’t even start on expropriation without compensation, nationalisation of banks and mines, and many other policies championed by the EFF that have failed virtually everywhere they have been tried.
Yet, do not dismiss out of hand the idea of Shivambu at the finance ministry. His name has been cropping up in Gauteng ANC circles for months now. Since January the EFF deputy president has been mentioned in glowing terms as smart, educated and mature enough to be in charge of a serious project. I have been in three conversations over the past two months in which a Gauteng ANC leader — or someone close to an ANC bigwig from the province — would blurt out: “You guys don’t realise just how smart that guy [Shivambu] is.”
I didn’t quite understand just where these utterances were coming from or what they were meant to achieve. Why would key party figures close to Deputy President Paul Mashatile and others be punting Shivambu? The word in the EFF was that Shivambu had fallen out of favour with his leader and that his deployment to KwaZulu-Natal to lead the EFF’s campaign in that province was a disaster, as the party had failed to “fill up” Moses Mabhida Stadium. It was unfair — it rained cats and dogs on the day. Malema had bodyshamed Shivambu in public at the Moses Mabhida rally, the latest in a series of micro-aggressions against Shivambu by the organisation’s everything-in-chief. It is now clear why Shivambu has been on the lips of ANC Gauteng leaders over the past few months. The two parties are talking, and talking seriously, about a possible post-election coalition and what it looks like. The Sunday Times reported this week that it “understands that Mashatile has held informal talks with the EFF to establish if the two parties could work together after the elections”.
Permutations of all sorts are on the table and are being considered.
This explains why, speaking to broadcaster JJ Tabane last week, Malema was confident enough to say that the ANC should resign itself to the fact that it must enter coalition discussions.
Then he dropped what seemed like a bombshell: “I’m prepared to give the EFF vote to the ANC nationally if it doesn’t get 50%, and then I’ll make one demand: make Floyd Shivambu the finance minister.”
Shivambu’s name is not the first to be floated as a key participant in post-election formations.
About 18 months ago, speculation flared that Mashatile and Malema were in a process of toenadering and that in a coalition scenario they would be president and deputy president of the country.
Now Malema has said he doesn’t need the “glory” of being a deputy president. Instead, he has posited, Shivambu would be finance minister. He then went on to repeat the usual conspiracy mantra that powerful Afrikaner businessmen control the finance ministry.
“The problem in this country is a department of finance owned and controlled by Stellenbosch and which engages in antipoor policies. We need a radical [approach],” Malema said.
The ANC is weak and, if it suffers a significant decline on May 29, will be susceptible to the EFF. Shivambu has been Malema’s right-hand man since the pair’s alliance in the ANC Youth League in the early 2010s. They helped former president Jacob Zuma ascend to power, they vilified him, and now they are getting ready to make space for him again at the top table.
Such a coalition would spell the backsliding of democratic practice and economic prosperity and stability for
South Africa.