EYE TO EYE?
EFF and the Zuma faction
IS IT A mere converging of interests or is there a bigger scheme that will one day see the EFF and the Zuma faction sharing a platform to jointly fight their political battles?
The political landscape has changed dramatically in the past two months. It has seen political formations that were once bitter enemies speaking with one voice on several matters.
The EFF has begun to sound a lot like the Zuma faction within the ANC.
During last Thursday’s State of the Nation Address, the EFF picked a fight with two men the Zuma faction also hates – Pravin Gordhan and the last apartheid president, FW de Klerk.
For the Zuma faction, Gordhan is allegedly behind the prosecution of their figurehead. They believe he is pulling the strings from behind. Gordhan denies this.
On the other side, the EFF wants Gordhan to be fired as the minister of public enterprises, accusing him of engineering the collapse of stateowned companies like Eskom and SAA in order for them to be sold for a song.
As a result, the two groups have a common enemy in Gordhan.
In De Klerk, the Zuma faction sees a man who should be in the dock for apartheid crimes.
It does not believe the same of former president Jacob Zuma, who is being prosecuted for his alleged role in the arms deal of the late 1990s.
For the EFF, De Klerk was not a target until February 2, when he told the SABC that apartheid was not a crime against humanity. He later retracted his statement.
The remarks saw him being added to the number of EFF enemies and increasing the convergence of the interests of the party and the Zuma faction.
Another point of convergence is the prosecution of Zuma.
The EFF says that while Zuma should be held accountable, “jail time for an old person like that is not advisable”.
On the other side, the Zuma faction wants the charges to be dropped and for Zuma to walk free.
Of course, the Zuma faction, though its faces have changed over the years since 2005 when it started asserting its authority within the ANC, has a long history with some EFF leaders.
During his time in the ANC Youth League, Malema defended Zuma and even said he was prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma and fight for him to stay out of jail.
Malema also fought many battles with Zuma and his camp. Among them was the one over recalling former president Thabo Mbeki.
After years of bad blood between the EFF and the Zuma faction, with the EFF seemingly closer to Ramaphosa, things are changing.
The EFF and the Zuma faction are reviving the Marikana massacre issue against Ramaphosa.
They both want him to be held accountable for it, arguing that he ordered the killing of 34 Lonmin miners who were fighting for a salary increment.
On the same podium he used to defend Zuma last week, Malema questioned why Ramaphosa had not been charged for Marikana.
“If there is a person who must go to jail, it is Cyril, Susan Shabangu (former mineral resources minister), Nathi Mthethwa (former police minister) and Riah Phiyega (former national commissioner).
“Those are the people who have to go to jail for having killed our people (in) daylight,” he said.
Independent political analyst, Protas Madlala, said the reason why the two former foes were uniting was because they had common enemies.
Madlala said they were also united by populism as they both saw it as a way to win the hearts and minds of the people.
“On the issue of (support for) Zuma, it is more personal and about settling scores. On the issue of privatisation it is more of a populist thing. They all use this issue to gain popularity… it is more of a populist stance,” Madlala said, adding that the land issue also united the two.
He said that despite their having converging interests, the country was unlikely to see the EFF and the
Zuma camp sharing a stage to fight their battles in the same way the EFF did when it shared a platform with several political and civic formations while fighting Zuma under the Save SA banner, which organised anti-zuma marches.
“The policy of the EFF is that ‘we will only support you if there is an issue we agree on’, it is not an open support.
“We have seen that with the way they supported the DA… It will depend on the issue at hand.”
Another political analyst, Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, said the reason the interests of the EFF and the Zuma faction were converging was that they had the same enemies, one of them being Gordhan.
“They have a common enemy. Whether that implies a relationship is not clear. Pravin has obviously been on the opposite end with Jacob Zuma going back to 2015, when Zuma fired him.
“Then, with Malema, it goes back to when Pravin was Sars commissioner and unfairly singled out Julius Malema for investigation.
“That was a politically motivated investigation,” he said.
On the issue of Malema saying Zuma should not go to prison, Ndletyana said Malema might be merely stating his views and it did not necessarily mean he was siding with the Zuma faction which was fighting tooth and nail to keep Zuma out of jail.