JULES AND JAKE, MADE FOR EACH OTHER
How will the Zuma-Malema bromance affect the outcome of these vital elections?
The rekindling of the bromance between Jacob Zuma and EFF leader Julius Malema is clearly tactical, but will it last — and what’s the likely impact on next month’s elections?
The relationship illustrates the catchphrases “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and “there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, only permanent interests”; it also underlines the scornful Malema sobriquet “flip-flopper in chief”.
In an interview on the SABC’s Unfiltered last year, Malema said only enemies referred to him as a flip-flopper.
Asked by host Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh whether he simply “blows with the wind”, the EFF leader said: “I can’t go with the wind. I am the wind. I create the political wind in South Africa and therefore cannot go with the wind.”
But he admitted: “In politics, there is what we call tactics and strategy. So sometimes you have to kiss many frogs to arrive at your strategic objective.”
That objective is simply to replace the ANC as the governing party. And the list of frogs Malema has been tactically kissing since 2019 is indeed long — disgraced former Western
Cape judge president John Hlophe, impeached former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane (whom he once dubbed as a puppet straight from the Guptas’ kitchen), Mzwanele Manyi, Carl Niehaus and now
Zuma.
In a media interaction last week (broadcast on the EFF’s YouTube channel), Malema said he met Zuma early in December. He told Zuma to “tell us what to do and we will do it” and to “endorse the EFF”. Instead, Zuma decided to front the MK Party.
Malema revealed that he had asked another outcast, former Free State premier Ace Magashule, to join the EFF but Magashule would not be led by a “young boy”. (Magashule’s party was later kicked out of the race for failing to meet the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s requirements.)
Despite Zuma having declined the EFF invitation, there is a clear convergence between the MK Party and the EFF and the two will undoubtedly work together after the election anyway.
Party Malema is policy, says but what it clearly links the’EFF isn t. For and Zuma, the who MK has never been strong on policy, it’s revenge. What is crucial is that Malema has dropped his one-time opposition to Zuma and is now directing his wind into the former president’s sails. What impact will Zuma’s separation from the ANC have on the EFF share of the vote?
The EFF’s support in its inaugural election in 2014 was 6.35%, which grew to 10.8% in 2019. In the local elections, the EFF won 8.19% in 2016 and 10.31% in 2021. While the EFF has not posted dramatic growth between elections, it has at least maintained its support base, something many new parties battle with. By 2019, it was clear that the EFF had changed course to cosy up to the Zuma faction within the deeply divided ANC. In doing so it lost any support it might have had from antiZuma voters, but it gained a significant protest vote from Zuma sympathisers inside the ANC. That the EFF nearly tripled its share of the vote in Zuma’s KwaZulu-Natal stomping ground was hardly due to its own virtues but clearly a protest vote against Cyril Ramaphosa. The EFF’s support in KZN surged from 1.9% in 2014 to 9.96% in 2019 a startling performance.
Now the Malema Mistral is swinging behind another rival of the Ramaphosa bloc Deputy President Paul Mashatile. Malema said last week that Mashatile had met with him and his lieutenants shortly before the final election results were in for Gauteng in 2019, when the ANC appeared at risk of dropping below 50%. Mashatile, he said, asked if the EFF would partner with the ANC to form a government in the province. In the end, the ANC scraped through and didn’t require a coalition partner. But the interesting question that Malema’s revelation raises is whether Mashatile was acting on his own or under party instructions.
This tale fits neatly into the narrative of a brewing showdown within the ANC over whether the party should be willing to get into bed with the red berets to remain in power something that the Ramaphosa camp rejects.
One question the election result will answer is whether the EFF’s efforts to exploit divisions in the ruling party have paid off. The wind direction, this time, will be controlled by the electorate.