TOM EATON | It seemed random, but Malema knew exactly what he was doing

As Julius Malema frantically pushes the Springboks into his en suite bathroom and sprays deodorant all over the duvet to hide their perfume, insisting his recent support of the team was a “slip in political consciousness”, Che Gucci is being accused of yet more flip-floppery. But I get it. I really do.

We all have needs and even the most ardent fake revolutionary can be seduced by the glamour of people who are actually successful and who can get a crowd to turn up and cheer for them without having to bus them in under penalty of excommunication.

Yes, I understand how Malema had his “slip”; how he forgot the script of his grift and turned full fanboy. Despite what he is trying to convince his party when he rises up above them on hydraulic lifts, he is only human. It can happen to the best of us and also to him.

Fortunately, however, Malema keeps himself closely surrounded by senior clergy, and at the weekend they clearly approached his throne, crawling backwards in the approved manner, to remind him of the decisions taken at the last conclave, where, after debating whether wealth was born, created or begotten from cigarette smugglers, it was also decided that the Springboks were anathema.

Which is how it came to pass on Sunday that having been reminded of the elastic tenets of his endlessly negotiable faith, Malema told his prosperity church, “Amabhokobhoko, die Bokke, Springboks is an apartheid symbol. You can't say remove apartheid symbols and maintain the name Springbok and the [Springbok] emblem and the colours that were used during apartheid by white people ... The Springboks must fall.”

At first glance, it seemed an odd thing to say just a few months out from a general election. Springbok rugby has probably never been more popular in South Africa than it is now, and to denounce its symbol — and to tell its tens of millions of supporters that they are fans of white supremacy and oppression and therefore shouldn’t bother voting for the EFF — seemed, well, unconventional.

Malema, however, knew exactly what he was doing.

Ours is a country sick to death of politicians; a country whose people yearned for democracy for centuries and yet who after just 30 years are so disillusioned by it that most eligible voters no longer vote.

In a country like that, elections are not won by the party that is liked the most. They are won by the party that is disliked the least.

What Malema understands is we are approaching an election in which the overriding priority of political parties is not to attract more voters but to keep the ones they have.

For the EFF that’s relatively simple: personality cults require a fairly considerable emotional investment to join and are therefore quite difficult to leave. Malema also has very little to gain by attracting many more voters, since the last thing he wants is to win an election. After all, why would a teenager, comfortably housed and fed and paid an allowance just for existing, want to do the dull, complicated job of running the household where he might risk having his theories on the universe tested by reality?

In a country like South Africa, elections are not won by the party that is liked the most. They are won by the party that is disliked the least.

For a man whose income and pension depend on preaching to the converted, going after the Springbok makes a great deal of sense. It is irrelevant to Malema if 25% of eligible voters like the symbol, or 50% or 75%. His only concern is the 5% who vote for him, guaranteeing another five years of salaries and status and connections. And should he accidentally increase that percentage to 6% or 7% or 10%, all the better: he can claim an enlarged mandate to keep getting that allowance and shouting down the stairs that he’s finished his pudding so someone needs to come and fetch the plate.

For the ANC and DA, still presenting themselves as broad churches that want to govern South Africa, the challenge is more complex. The DA, certainly, seems to have understood the crisis of voter disillusionment and has pivoted away from its past election strategies: instead of pointing at the ANC and saying, ‘We’re Not Them,’ it is now pointing at its alliance and saying, ‘We’re Them, for as long as Not Them is in power, at which point Them might need to be renegotiated.’

The ANC, however, seems completely trapped in its own ghastly wreckage, unable even to take credit for small successes without smearing them in failure.

Two weeks ago, when Pravin Gordhan announced the relaunch of SAA, he boasted the national carrier was “rising from the ashes of state capture like a phoenix”.

It was a dream talking point for ANC campaign managers. And yet, of all the metaphors Gordhan’s speechwriters could scrape together, they went with the phoenix: a squawking, shrieking hallucination; a thing doomed to die in flames and be reborn over and over again; less a symbol of immortality than an endless process of reinventing the wheel to go exactly nowhere. Just think of how much the lawyers would make.

Springboks must fall; phoenixes must rise: the familiar election hoopla has started. Soon, they’ll start telling us to vote for them. But this time, perhaps for the first time, what they’ll really be saying is: please don’t go.