Politics is fascist rather than left
political spectrum. As a result, what it stands for in terms of values, beliefs and ideology is unclear. It makes it up as it goes through the theatre of national politics, expedient political manoeuvring and through its authoritarian populist inventiveness.
The EFF received just over a million votes in the previous elections. Does this mean that those who vote for it believe in its mercurial, shallow and makeshift belief system? Are these the citizens who buy into the spectacle of authoritarian populist politics?
An electoral outcome is difficult to decipher. There are always different degrees of support for any political party. This ranges from hardcore support and sympathisers to swing voters. In the last election, the EFF certainly picked up a significant anti-ANC vote and it also found traction in sections of the black middle class and the unemployed poor.
The EFF could not build on this momentum of national support and win a local government election outright. Instead it emerged from the elections as a coalition partner to the neoliberal Democratic Alliance in most big metros.
Moreover, given its disposition to violent disruption and its inability to provide a way forward on national challenges, it is likely that its electoral support has peaked. The next national election will be telling and will really be surprising if South Africans vote for a party that merely offers fiery rhetoric, intolerance and violence.
But this still leaves red on EFF T-shirts, berets and paraphernalia. What does this mean? For some the red dimension of EFF identity makes it left, coupled with a militant dose of rhetoric, such as evoking the big N word — nationalisation. Nationalisation has always been about state capitalism and nothing more. The EFF has successfully claimed a space to the left of the ANC and has projected itself as a left force, picking up on residual anti-establishment sentiment.
Yet its antics in Parliament of representing workers with overalls and hard hats smacks of hypocrisy. Whereas most workers earn less than R3000 a month, an EFF MP earns more than R1-million a year or more than R80 000 a month. It pays to act exploited in the EFF script.
But the EFF should not believe that workers are not watching or are unaware of the social distance. Moreover, the EFF has not united left forces of the working class, the left intelligentsia or more generally left social movements. Nor has it provided a serious analysis of contemporary capitalism to guide its interventions. The EFF, in claiming to be left, has undermined the prospects of the left in South Africa. It is contributing to the defeat of the left.
The EFF is not a left force by any stretch of the imagination despite its own declarations, the colour red in its identity and simplistic media representations of it as a left party. An EFF in power will not take South Africa to the left; it does not have what it takes. An EFF-led South Africa will probably mean most South Africans will think the Zuma days were wonderful.
There is no straight line from Malema to the United States’ Donald Trump, to France’s far-right Marine Le Pen or even the fundamentalist group al-Shabab.
The EFF is not fascist in the 20th-century sense, but is certainly expressing elements of a 21st-century fascism in its role in South African politics. It is pioneering an original fascism in the South African context. As it fights the ANC and other progressive social forces violently, it is also delegitimising democratic processes and forms of dialogue.
Unlike the ANC, the EFF claims to be left yet it is politically and ideologically certainly not left. Anticapitalist ideology is meaningless in the EFF understanding of the world and thus it is not a serious left-orientated force.
The interests it seeks to aggregate are disparate and not representative of the working class as a whole. Its disdain for hard-won democratic values, constitutional principles and practices makes it nothing less than an antidemocratic pariah.
South Africans need to choose carefully where they stand in relation to the EFF. The national dialogue to resolve the higher education crisis will continue in coming months, with or without the EFF.
Student formations also have to reflect on their commitment to disciplined, inclusive and respectful democratic dialogue to find policy solutions.