TOM EATON | Let’s not fall for Malema’s pre-rally rally on Monday

Monday’s “shutdown” by the EFF has been sold as a national protest against load-shedding and ANC misrule. It isn’t. It’s the EFF’s first big election rally ahead of 2024, and it will force South Africa’s other parties to hastily throw together their own updated sales pitches.

There will be an awful lot of noise over the weekend, and perhaps even more next week, so before it ramps up, it might be worth stating a few things quietly and clearly, if only to help make sense of the next few days.

The first is that the EFF wants to be attacked by state security forces on Monday.

It can’t say it publicly, but that is the clear hope for Julius Malema. If the SAPS displays any of the heavy-handed thuggery we saw during the Covid-19 lockdown, Malema will be able to draw the parallels with Sharpeville Day that he so badly wants, and the EFF will take that revolutionary credit all the way to the bank next year.

Which brings us to the second fact about Monday, namely, that the ANC has just one job: to make Bheki Cele understand that rubber bullets, sjamboks and water cannons are politically radioactive. The moment a blue uniform donders a red onesie in front of TV cameras, the ANC is printing money for the EFF.

The trouble with this, however, is that ANC needs to sell itself to its voters on Monday as two things that might be mutually exclusive: a calm, dignified, adult presence, refusing to get sucked into the tantrums of immature opportunists, but also a firm defender of law and order. Malema knows it can’t do both and is betting that Cele’s worst instincts — and his most badly trained officers — will come roaring out.

Not that it’s a risky bet, mind you. Instead of understanding what Monday is — a live-action advert for the EFF — and responding with dismissive, superior, slightly bored rhetoric, the ANC already appears to have taken the bait to a degree that Malema could only have dreamed of.

I’m sure Ntshavheni and Modise thought they were sounding tough and decisive, but all they were doing was telling the country that the EFF is infinitely bigger and more potent than it is.

On Thursday, minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni not only warned that “attempts to cause disruption ... will be met with the full might of the law” (cue Cele, stage left, swinging a sjambok) but for some reason prefaced her warning by referring to regime change.

“Regime change through unconstitutional means will not happen in South Africa,” she said. “Anyone with ambitions to govern this country must wait to contest the 2024 general elections.”

In case anyone thought she was exaggerating the ANC’s hyperbolic, panicked response, defence minister Thandi Modise also used the opportunity to announce that the SANDF was on standby and ready to be deployed.

I’m sure Ntshavheni and Modise thought they were sounding tough and decisive, but all they were doing was telling the country that the EFF is infinitely bigger and more potent than it is. Regime change, after all, is something that gets done via air- and sea blockades, cruise missiles, and foreign boots jumping off foreign transport aircraft onto hastily constructed runways. And yet if the EFF absolutely shoots the lights out on Monday and enlists two non-EFF supporters for every one of their voters, only 5% of South Africans will join the shutdown. Regime change? My god, 5% is barely a nappy change.

In other words, the ANC has already blown its election pitch long before Monday even happens, revealing that Malema still has a Rasputin-like hold over its imagination, and that it will continue dancing to his tune for years to come.

For the DA, not yet boxed in by the EFF, Monday is a great electioneering opportunity. If the shutdown passes quietly, the DA can hop onto the news cycle and agree that the ANC is a disaster and that something should be done. If there is violence from either the EFF or the security forces, it can denounce fascist thuggery and ANC kragdadigheid.

Certainly, the DA needs a clear, uncomplicated and unified message after this week’s blunders.

First it was Ghaleb Cachalia insulting autistic people and then taking the coward’s way out, blaming his critics for wilfully misreading his stupid little tweet.

Then came Wednesday’s talk by famous anti-vaxxer Dr Aseem Malhotra, hosted by Western Cape legislature deputy speaker Beverley Schäfer, followed by a photo op with John Steenhuisen.

Western Cape premier Alan Winde, who led the province’s vaccination drive, was clearly livid, saying he hoped there would be an investigation into how the event happened, but Steenhuisen wasn’t apologising. On the contrary, he explained, he opposes cancel culture and often meets people whose beliefs he doesn’t agree with. This strikes me as a very mature and sensible policy, and I look forward to Steenhuisen meeting with the Russian ambassador so he can hear Russia’s side of the story in Ukraine.

In short, after a week of the DA pulling itself in different directions, Monday can’t come soon enough.

As for the rest of us, well, it’s the same as always: stay safe, stay calm and, above all, stay alert to the sales pitch.

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