MAKHUDU SEFARA | 'Hatred' of Malema blinds some white people to the EFF’s shutdown success

The “mistake” EFF leader Julius Malema made over the years, as he carved a niche for his party, was to insult white people, to tell them they don’t matter and to say black people should not turn the other cheek when assaulted or shot at by white racists.

One of the gifts, it seems, Malema gave to many young black people is the licence to fight back, literally. If they shoot at you, shoot back; if they slap you, slap back; don’t be a victim of racists, he’d repeatedly say. He has helped them not to be like their parents, some of whom meekly accepted white as the embodiment of purity and superiority.

Malema’s politics can be described variously. The one thing that is clear, is he is very radical and uncompromising on race. He has used his pugilistic character to turn the screws on race, upending the soft talk of rainbow nation and nonracialism to “economic justice in our lifetime”. To him, white people, considered “the owners of the means of production” otherwise called white monopoly capital, are the enemy.

As a consequence, a lot of white people have not forgiven him. Many respond anxiously, not rationally, where he is concerned. This is why it is not in some of them to be fair in how they respond to the question whether Monday’s shutdown was a success. They can’t bring themselves to congratulate him on some elements because to do so is to, in their view, encourage his incorrigible, uncouth onslaught on the white race. It is, in a way, considered self-sabotage. Anything that has Malema in it must fail.

Ahead of the shutdown, it appeared a foregone conclusion that the EFF shutdown would become an orgy of violence. Malema’s insistence that violence must be met with violence did not help. The flurry of activity preceding the shutdown suggested heightened national anxiety. Even the country’s president, ministers, police and army officials had to assure us that we will be safe. 

Yet, the clearest example of barbarism that came without any assurances of safety in recent history is to be found in Senekal, Free State, where farmers protesting against murders unleashed violence hitherto unseen against the state. They overturned police cars, set them alight, fired shots in the police charge office, turned furniture upside down before leaving case files strewn on the floor, possibly dislocating and damaging evidence. For how long did we hear about it? Have the hooligans been arrested? How many charged or sentenced? Well.

With the EFF shutdown, the party, in Tshwane at least, had queue marshalls who created a buffer between shops and the general marchers. The idea was to ensure that even possible agent provocateurs were denied an opportunity to behave like the Senekal hoodlums. But how many are giving the EFF credit for this? How many police cars were set alight, overturned?

The point is, for reasons that have got to do with Malema's obsession with race, the EFF will be guilty of the shutdown violence until they prove themselves innocent, while the Senekal thugs are treated as poor farmers whose anger is understood because the state is unable to ensure their safety.

Our answer, if we are honest, ought to be that to the extent that the shutdown was meant to put a stop to major economic activity in the country and place the EFF on the lips of most South Africans as parties begin a journey to contest the 2024 elections, the shutdown was a success.

An analysis of the political landscape in South Africa today shows that the EFF is, perhaps, the only vocal party agitating, without the finesse necessary in a post-1994 era, for a pro-black agenda. And the only party obsessing about a return of the land stolen from the black majority. The rest occasionally speak about but don’t have much to show for land reform. As the ANC is increasingly becoming weaker, the lesser it is becoming of a threat to white interests. The radical among us will ask if it ever was.

The DA is led by a white male and, for all intents and purposes, has stopped pretending to care about the fundamental transformation required to change the colour of the economy. The PAC and the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) are weak. The UDM, IFP, Cope and others are on life support to threaten and or do much to threaten the status quo.

As the 2024 national elections approach, the idea of Malema at the Union Buildings as deputy president has spawned consternation in corners of the country. In his language, the “chest pains” are setting in.

Former DA leader Tony Leon, in a piece in Business Day titled ‘The nightmare keeping us awake: Malema in the Union Buildings’ this week, notes the importance of excluding the EFF in future coalitions.

“Of course, simply replicating its 2021 low will allow the ANC to buy off a couple of small parties, of which there will be many, without having to invoke the nightmare option of an EFF coalition.” The last bit is what is relevant. The DA has also indicated it was prepared to go into a coalition with any other party, including the Freedom Front Plus, but not the EFF.

Some have found Malema and the EFF objectionable because of lingering links to tenders in various guises, or his tax affairs. Put crudely, this is a party of thieves, they say! But the question is: are we not able to say the same thing about the ANC, DA and National Party? Certainly, there is a long list of corruption and malfeasance linked to various parties.  Just last week, the DA’s MMC for housing in Cape Town council, Malusi Booi, had his offices raided and was suspended and then fired following allegations of corruption. The obvious point is that where evidence of wrongdoing is found against any politician, they must face the full wrath of the law. The only major thing that differentiates the EFF is the apparent crassness, or confidence, with which it and its leader deal with what they term “the white enemy”.

The question has to be asked if there is no correlation between how the EFF publicly confronts its "enemy" and how the "enemy" reacts to such provocation. It may be simplistic to say that on account of the provocation, some white people are unable to rise above it and be fair in their critique of the party. But still, the question remains whether or not they are, in the wake of the shutdown, in fact, rising above the provocation. Some of their reactions appear rooted in their anxiety more than they're rational, giving rise to the notion they, too, seem to hate him as he does them.

In the end, we must still ask: was the shutdown a success? Our answer, if we are honest, ought to be that to the extent that the shutdown was meant to put a stop to major economic activity in the country and place the EFF on the lips of most South Africans as parties begin a journey to contest the 2024 elections, the shutdown was a success. We can quibble about what the threshold of turnout must be, but that is not the point, just as the expressed hope for the resignation of president Cyril Ramaphosa was not.

In the EFF’s single-minded pursuit of the shutdown symbolism, it self-sabotaged in that the people most affected were EFF supporters at the lower rung of economic activity. If you add to this Malema’s use of strong language against the uniform-wearing police from a party whose red uniform is supposed to be a symbol of solidarity with uniformed workers, then some aspects of the shutdown failed. The poor messaging being one of these. So the shutdown was a mix of wins and losses.

A quick, thoughtless reaction claiming it was a damp squib simply because it was peaceful comes from a place of hurt from those Malema considers the “enemy”.