Malema’s tough decisions: Should
The EFF leader has said that the door was still open to collaboration with the DA and MK parties after the elections, but not with Ramaphosa
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is contemplating removing its deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, as its national deployee to Kwazulu-natal or adding more people to reinforce his elections machinery in the province ahead of this year’s national and provincial vote.
Whichever way the EFF moves, party leader Julius Malema said, this should not be read in any other way but as a strategy motivated by the prevailing conditions in the province deemed the battleground ahead of the hotly contested elections.
With the birth of Jacob Zuma’s umkhonto wesizwe (MK) party, which is mainly focused on wooing the Kwazulu-natal vote, and the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) channelling their resources to the province, Malema said only a naive party would not relook at its strategy.
Kwazulu-natal is one of the top three provinces with the most voters, alongside Gauteng and the Western Cape.
Shivambu has been criticised in some quarters after the EFF recently struggled to fill the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban for its manifesto launch.
But in an interview with the Mail & Guardian this week, Malema insisted that if the party changed tack in Kwazulu-natal and reshuffled the warm bodies from the national leadership, this would have nothing to do with the manifesto launch, which the EFF maintains was a huge success.
He added that should the party decide to move Shivambu elsewhere, this would not be the first time it has reshuffled its national deployee in Kwazulu-natal, having previously done so with Mbuyiseni Ndlozi and secretary general Marshall Dlamini.
Malema said the EFF was moving up a gear in its election work in the province, adding that its leadership would assess whether Shivambu was the right person for the job.
“Is he the right person? Can we find someone else? Given the developments of MK party and the dynamics around that and the
ANC’S attitude towards KZN and the IFP thinking that this is a battleground, do we maintain the deputy president or do we bring an alternative that will match what those people are doing?” he said.
“It’s a discussion we’re going to have between today [Wednesday] and tomorrow [Thursday] because today the officials are going to meet,” he said.
The EFF leader, called the commander-in-chief within the party, added that this week its top structures, including the central election task force and central command team (CCT) — the highest decisionmaking structure between conferences — would look at its election work, “where we are weak, where we are strong, [and] the last [voter] registration”.
“And then the CCT will look at the political aspect and implications of deployments of leaders into those issues. And when a decision is taken in that regard, we’ll communicate. If there’s no need to change, we’ll equally communicate,” he said.
“But according to our manifesto, we’ve got phases and this is a serious phase that needs all of us to be concentrating on the election wagon. Every time they say someone is coming to reinforce me, I will never be worried. Or if I’m being reassigned to go and do something else, or I’m told to continue doing what I’m doing. It’s okay.”
The relationship between Malema and his deputy has come under scrutiny over the past few months, with some in the EFF calling for Shivambu to contest the party president position at its next party elections in December.
Malema added fuel to the fire in July last year at the EFF’S 10th birth
day gala dinner when he warned Shivambu that he was “ruthless”.
Malema said at the time that he had warned Shivambu that the day his deputy was tired of his leadership, he should openly tell him instead of secretly organising against him. “The problem would start when [someone organises] against me, and I hear it in the corners; I am very ruthless with people who do that, and Floyd knows that. In the past 10 years, there has never been anything which suggests that me and Floyd have fundamental differences.”
Malema later poured cold water on a possible split between the two EFF leaders, saying he had even told his son to consult Shivambu should he die.
Kwazulu-natal is one of the most hotly contested provinces in the coming elections with the ANC projected to lose its majority.
The EFF sent Shivambu to the province last year to stabilise its ground forces after factional battles threatened to tear apart its previous electoral gains. Shivambu was also mandated to bring back party members who had left the EFF after a rift between Dlamini and former provincial chair Vusi Khoza.
“I think he has done that successfully,” Malema said of Shivambu’s work in the province. “We’re talking about a packed stadium because that product comes directly from a stable organisation which he has managed to create.”
The EFF had a successful 2021 local government election in Kwazulu-natal, after good growth in the 2019 general election, and now has representation in most municipalities in the province.
Four provincial leaders previously told the M&G that the confirmation that Shivambu had benefited from the now-defunct VBS Mutual Bank heist had become “too much to brush off” and this could affect the party’s election outcomes.
All this comes in the wake of a strained relationship with provincial leaders over the 2016 local government elections, where Shivambu was accused by former ethekwini ward councillor Mthandeni Zungu of misusing Kwazulu-natal election funds.
Leaders in the region have previously called on the EFF national leadership to remove Shivambu from the province “for fear of mistrust”.
“We call on national leadership to help us in our quest to have the [deputy president] replaced in the province for we fear that his influence in the region may not be impactful. We have history with him and this VBS issue does not make it easy for us,” one regional leader previously told the M&G.
Shivambu was also booed by the party’s members during a branch meeting in Kwazulu-natal’s ilembe district where drunk members disrupted a meeting that he was chairing.
“From time to time, we move each other like this. We have identified KZN and Gauteng as battlegrounds. That’s why Ndlozi is here. And it will not be strategic to move him here, but we’ll listen to the arguments that are advanced, and then we’ll look at Kwazulu-natal,” Malema said this week.
Despite a previous report by the M&G that Malema was disappointed with the organisation of the Durban manifesto launch event and the turnout, he said he had left the Moses Mabhida Stadium “the happiest man ever”.
“Even if I had received 20 000 people, I would have been the happiest,” he said.
Malema was adamant that any coalition talk with the ANC would not be negotiated under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa, whom he has accused of being under the influence of the wealthy Oppeheimer family.
Malema said he had tried and failed to recruit former ANC president Zuma to endorse the EFF, but believed that they would eventually converge. “I’ve made an attempt, and as I listen to the language spoken now by president Zuma, it might be this or that we don’t agree with. But we’re not far apart and we’re likely to converge beyond the elections. Our concentration now, correctly so, should be on gathering as many votes as possible.”
He added that the EFF was prepared to sit in the opposition benches before it would compromise the seven pillars of its constitution. He said the EFF’S internal polling suggested that it would be the official opposition ahead of the
Democratic Alliance (DA) after this year’s elections.
“And we think that if we occupy that position, even when we’re not in government, we stand a good chance to influence policy. Because if you look at DA now, for some reason and somehow they influence what direction we need to take,” he said.
Malema said despite having been declared enemy number one by the DA, the EFF was open to negotiations with the party because this was the most ideal union to end the ANC’S reign. “So everybody should be saying, ‘Guys, let’s come together as a matter of principle and remove the ANC and see if there won’t be new role players who can take our country to a different level’.”