JUSTICE MALALA | Forget about the poor, Malema aims to position himself and the EFF for next year’s election

Violence, fear, and intimidation are part of the political playbook of the EFF and its leader, Julius Malema.

That means that over the next 14 months, as the 2024 national elections approach, we will see even more intimidation and threats of violence from this party. It is who they are.

Malema, his henchman Floyd Shivambu, his legal shield Dali Mpofu, and others in the party’s leadership are past masters at painting themselves as the victims of violence while issuing coded threats of violence.

This is a trick they used at the state of the nation speech in February, when Malema and his fellow EFF MPs rushed the stage where the president of the republic was sitting.

When stopped, they claimed to be victims of police brutality.

On Friday, Malema told EFF members in Gauteng: “All types of intimidation have been issued by the state. All types of intimidation have been issued by private security guards.

“No private security guard or citizen has the right to shoot at another private citizen. If a private citizen shoots at you, you must be prepared ... fight fire with fire. We must never smile with anyone who wants to shoot us.”

It is all doublespeak, but it is a sleight of hand that fools only a few.

This is a party of fear and intimidation, of violence lying in wait to be unleashed.

Listen to Malema over the past few days and he has often let the mask slip and called for open violence.

On Friday he told his supporters: “We do not want to know what you will be doing on Monday. Don’t talk about it on your phones. Don’t talk on social media. They are listening to you, don’t write about it on SMS or on WhatsApp. Person to person: attack.”

This is the clearest incitement to violence — and to evade detection by police — I have heard come out of a politician’s mouth since 1994. But it is part of the intimidation that pours forth from Malema often.

There is nothing surprising in Malema’s dog whistle of the past week — the past 13 years have been evidence of his personality cult and thinly concealed violence and intimidation

The man and his fellow EFF leaders practise the political dog whistle (saying something that has a secondary meaning intended to be understood only by a particular group) often with their supporters.

On Wednesday, Malema said: “Anyone who comes with nonsense, do not tolerate that nonsense from anyone. It doesn’t matter who they are.

“We are not scared of them, and we are not scared of Fidelity [the private security company]. I’ve never been scared of Fidelity.”

There is nothing surprising in Malema’s dog whistle of the past week — the past 13 years have been evidence of his personality cult and thinly concealed violence and intimidation.

Think of the machine gun waved about and fired into the air at a rally in 2018 at Sisa Dukashe Stadium in Mdantsane at the party’s fifth birthday celebrations. Why would any sensible leader fire a gun at a rally, endangering people’s lives?

So this past week’s intimidation is not surprising at all.

Malema did not have any qualms about threatening death: “Let any boy or girl come and try to stop me. He will meet his maker.”

The EFF wants to style itself as a party of liberation. Born in a democratic, post-apartheid country, it has no liberation credentials, so it is like the last-born child who fights to be heard at the dinner table. For this it is not prepared to use persuasion, as others do. It has chosen intimidation, fear and even violence because it cannot acquire liberation credentials.

The shutdown call seemed to be an attempt to employ some of the tactics of the ANC/United Democratic Front in the mid-1980s. Then, using the slogans “render South Africa ungovernable” and “render apartheid unworkable”, the ANC sought to make every aspect of apartheid rule unenforceable.

Malema is a keen student of Peter Mokaba, the militant ANC youth leader who dominated politics in the late 1980s through to the early 2000s. Mokaba often used provocative language, eliciting howls of outrage from his detractors. He was fighting an evil, illegitimate, dehumanising, system: apartheid.

There isn’t any way that the state or the laws in democratic SA today can be said to be illegitimate. Thus, squeal and shout as he might, Malema’s fidelity to fear and intimidation seems totally selfish: he aims to position himself and his party for next year’s election.

This is not about the liberation of the poor.

Malema’s calls for violence are similar to former US president Donald Trump, who this weekend urged his supporters to protest to stop him from being arrested.

In 2021, Trump refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of election outcomes and exhorted his supporters to attend his rally in Washington. “Be there,” he told his millions of Twitter followers. “Will be wild.”

It ended in tears. Whether yesterday, today or in months to come, the EFF resorting to fear, intimidation and violence will end the same way.