Toy soldiers of a red army on a march to nowhere
| EFF spews fighting talk but the oppressed masses just aren’t listening, writes
WHAT Vladimir Lenin meant by “revolution” is still fiercely debated. There are, however, certain things that are more or less agreed upon. First, he sought to destroy the state — an oppressive instrument that violently marginalised the proletariat; second, he believed that a people-led regime should replace it.
It would be a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, an idea first articulated by Karl Marx and later redefined by Lenin and, he argued, achievable only through violent revolution.
How one gets from A to B is where most of the debate is to be found.
But this, in general terms, is the EFF template for change in South Africa. It sees itself as the voice of the proletariat, and the ANC government, epitomised by tragedies like Marikana, as the violently oppressive obstacle it seeks to destroy. It has other ideological influences thrown into the mix, from Frantz Fanon to Che Guevara, which it selectively picks and chooses from as needs be, but the general plan is a fundamental upturning of the underlying edifice: the state must fall, in en vogue parlance.
“A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate” that now infamous banner read at the EFF’s launch in 2010. So, how is its revolution going? Not very well, is the answer. The problem the party has is that, despite all its revolutionary bluster, it is fundamentally enmeshed in the very state it seeks to destroy. Its public representatives swear allegiance to the constitution when they take office, it regularly invokes the state’s various mechanisms to fight injustice — indeed, no less than the Constitutional Court itself when it comes to Nkandla — and, day to day, it loves nothing more than to grab media headlines, issue statements and dispense parliamentary soundbites like every other conventional political party in a modern, constitutional democracy.
Significantly, the party would also seem to live or die by the financial allowance it receives from parliament and the Independent Electoral Commission.
The truth is, the EFF is absolutely beholden to the state, financially and politically, ostensibly loyal to the constitution and totally and utterly incapable of throwing anything over.
It seems incapable even of following through on the mild pseudo-revolutionary threats it does make. Consider the following:
In 2012, EFF leader Julius Malema said: “We are going to lead a mining revolution in this country. We are going to each mine. We will [make] these mines ungovernable until the boers come to the table.”
The EFF has not made the mines ungovernable.
In 2014, the EFF threatened to make the entire Gauteng ungovernable. “We will fight. We have the capability to mobilise our people and fight physically,” said Malema. No one was mobilised, no one physically fought, and the province, however dysfunctional, carries on.
Last year, as part of a “national occupy land week”, the EFF called on “all homeless people to identify open and unoccupied land wherever they choose and engage on the struggle to restore their land”. Outside of a few minor isolated failures — most of which culminated in legal proceedings — the party’s call was not answered. So the oppressed masses too don’t seem to be heeding the EFF’s rallying cry.
Later last year, Malema declared the party would occupy “each and every branch of Absa until we are given a practical programme of action on how the bank is going to intervene to resolve the inequalities in society”.
Guess what? Not a single branch was occupied.
There have been other empty threats along the way. “SAB-Miller must be rest assured that it will be one of the targets of the economic freedom occupations to ensure it implements minimum wages [sic].” There was no follow-through there either.
“We are looking at the leafy suburbs [of Cape Town]. We have identified land in those areas but we must have a strategy [so that] when people wake up there is a new town,” said an EFF spokesperson in 2015. But the leafy suburbs of Cape Town are just fine. There is no new town and the EFF’s threat to occupy land in places such as Camps Bay and Rondebosch came to naught.
For all its revolutionary pretences, the EFF is completely ineffective as a revolutionary party in the traditional sense of the idea. It is true that revolutions come in different forms. The party’s attitude to parliament, for example, is to disrupt — to render the institution unable to function. It has had some small success in this regard. But while its pettiness in opposing condolences and rising on every conceivable point of order frustrates, it has hardly brought parliament to its knees. All it seems to have done is exacerbate parliament’s general incompetence in the public mind.
Perhaps that is some small victory, but hardly a revolutionary one. The exact same outcome could be attributed to the DA, which through formal objection and protest has likewise done much to highlight parliament’s bias and ineptitude in the public mind.
History’s grand revolutionary movements, those seriously set on overturning the state, would have nothing to do with the state. The EFF’s Leninism has led it to believe it can bring things down from the inside. While that project stutters along at an inane pace, outside of parliament the EFF’s revolutionary activity seems to be nothing more than rhetoric. When it does chal-
Its constitutional victory will have made a far bigger impact than any of its pseudo-revolutionary gimmicks
lenge the state — in, say, an attempted land grab — the state simply rounds up the rabble and calls in the authorities, for the most part without blinking an eye.
For every “revolutionary” call the EFF makes, it is just as likely to invoke existing democratic regulations or the constitution in the name of its cause. For the EFF, the state — this giant, oppressive force — switches between legitimate and illegitimate from day to day.
So much of the EFF’s reputation is bound up in its ability to evoke fear. Make no mistake, in its policies and programme of action, if ever realised, there is much to be fearful about. Were the EFF’s economic agenda alone ever made real, it would turn South Africa into a basket case overnight.
But when it comes to the EFF’s actual revolutionary credentials, it has precious little to show. Regularly it fluffs out its feathers like a peacock; just as regularly it scampers into the corner when the state claps its hands.
Lenin himself would probably laugh heartily at the EFF. The greatest pretence it puts up is that it now occupies the mantle of South Africa’s one true revolutionary force, which it has taken over from the ANC, a liberation movement it argues has stalled and succumbed to capital and power. Really, though, it is a joke.
At the post-Nkandla Constitutional Court judgment briefing, Malema held up a copy of the constitution, which he described as the EFF’s “bible”. Many will hope this a sign that, despite itself, the party is succumbing to the constraints of formal democracy. So far as its contemporary legacy goes, its constitutional victory will have made a far bigger impact than any of its pseudo-revolutionary gimmicks. Kudos to it, but revolutionary irony doesn’t come thicker than that.
As for the revolution itself, however, the party’s primary weapon seems to be the press statement. If it fails to make a significant mark in the next elections, it will continue to be neither a revolutionary nor a parliamentary force.
There is no new town and the EFF’s threat to occupy land in places like Camps Bay and Rondebosch came to naught The greatest pretence it puts up is that it now occupies the mantle of South Africa’s one true revolutionary force