What did former president Jacob Zuma, EFF leader Julius Malema, Tony Yengeni, Dali Mpofu and the rest of their delegations discuss last Friday? We may deride their “politics of spectacle” while Zuma gleefully tramples on the constitution, but the meeting may have serious political implications. It could reconfigure our political landscape.
Think about it. Formed in 2013, the EFF expected to ride the wave of anti-Zuma sentiment and become a significant player in the 2014 election. It garnered a paltry 6.35%. In 2019 it improved to just 10.79%. At this miserable rate of growth the EFF will be in power in 30 to 40 years’ time.
The party seems to have reached a ceiling on new membership. It desperately needs to grow, but after haranguing Zuma and getting up to numerous publicity stunts, it’s still just another small party scratching at the ANC.
There is no doubt Zuma comes with a constituency. The radical economic transformation (RET) brigade in the ANC is increasingly frustrated. It has tried everything to unseat President Cyril Ramaphosa. It has tried to paint him as corrupt as it is. It has failed. Instead, the noose of criminal charges is slowly tightening around its members’ necks. ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule has been charged; Zuma is dodging various court summonses. A second area of support may come from Zulu nationalist sentiment, which he has stoked and courted for years. Essentially, these are Inkatha members who moved to the ANC en masse in the late 2000s — and may move with Zuma to a new entity.
The EFF realises there will be some votes to be gained this year and in 2024 from disillusioned youth after the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that’s not enough to unseat Ramaphosa and the ANC.
The only way to grow is through the Pac-Man Method: eat up the opposition. The DA’s growth since 1994 is a result of it building up alliances with struggling parties, then ingesting them. The National Party (NP) was gobbled up swiftly, followed by Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID), then Agang. Wherever it could, the DA took. Helen Zille very nearly performed the crowning glory of her political career when she held talks with Cope, the UDM and a handful of other parties after 2009 with a view to forming a coalition of the opposition. It could have led to a super-opposition. With its financial muscle, tight organisation and slick party machinery, it would only have been a matter of time before the DA would have eaten up these parties too.
The EFF has been trying to eat up the ANC whole since the days when it was still called the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). Remember how it tried to make the party adopt nationalisation of mines and failed? Or nationalisation of the Reserve Bank and expropriation of land without compensation? Of course, Zuma does not care about these policies. He cares only about preserving himself, his family and having a jolly nice time. But he wears these policies as a cloak when it suits him.
The rupture within the ANC has left these policy divisions open for exploitation. The RET brigade may be a faction of the ANC, but in the EFF it is the entire party. These two divided entities can now join: inside the ANC or outside it. Having failed to get rid of Ramaphosa, Zuma is now tempted to seek greener pastures. Remember that his most ardent follower is a Malema-Lite, Black First Land First’s (BLF) Andile Mngxitama. So Malema sidling over is not strange at all. It is a continuum in the party’s closeness to Zuma. Mngxitama was an EFF MP before being violently chased out by his former comrades.
The only calculation for Zuma here is whether there is anything left for him inside the ANC.
Zuma needs a new political home. Malema needs new members. It’s a sweet deal.
It’s also personal. In the 1990s the social welfare department of the ANC, where Mpofu worked for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was cleaned up by Ramaphosa when he was secretary-general. Malema’s appeal against expulsion from the ANC was thrown out in the 2010s by a committee led by Ramaphosa. Zuma thought he could manipulate Ramaphosa and keep him out of the ANC presidency in 2017. Ramaphosa outsmarted him and engineered the former president’s ousting in February 2018. We know that by the end Zuma was begging to stay, coming up with nonsensical reasons, such as having to introduce Ramaphosa to African leaders.
The only calculation for Zuma here is whether there is anything left for him inside the ANC. He is the man who once very wisely said: “It’s cold outside the ANC.” We know that is why he has fought so hard to stay inside. The ANC has always defended him.
The party may not do so any longer. That is why he is eager to drink tea with Malema. He desperately needs a new, principle-free home.
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