Julius Malema wouldn’t have minded that Jacob Zuma split the ANC, but now that Zuma has split the EFF too, and Floyd Shivambu has just split, you can understand why Malema was looking so emotional on Thursday, and accidentally revealed so much.
In his defence, it’s difficult to keep your guard up when your bestie has just vamoosed, but still, it was startling to see him reveal so clearly — or at least confirm so thoroughly — that the EFF, and by extension the so-called Progressive Caucus, is driven by personality and patronage rather than principle and policy.
Certainly, I’ve never heard him be more honest about that than when, during his emergency press conference, he said: “The constitution of the EFF does not allow people to resign and join other parties and come back to the party, but I have made this offer to Floyd,” adding that he had done so because, as he told Shivambu, “you are not a member, you are a founder”.
And there you have it. Constitutions don’t mean anything when it’s your friends violating them, and founders get different treatment to ordinary members lower down the food chain. One set of rules for voting fodder, another set entirely for you and your buddies.
It’s these kind of ultra-flexible principles that make the EFF right at home in the Progressive Caucus. You can certainly argue that the current coalition government is awash with hypocrisy, from the ANC persisting with dirty cadres or the loudly righteous DA suddenly going tjoepstil on Phala Phala, but across the aisle, the ideological flip-floppery is world class.
This, of course, is because both parties were formed around just two principles: soothing their founders’ egos after said founders were rejected by the ANC, and providing a big pension for said founders once they get sick of pretending to want to deliver a better life for all South Africans.
To be fair, some of their followers do seem to have some principles.
Mzwanele Manyi, for example, has always been clear about his desire for radical land reform. That, after all, is why he left the ANC in 2018 to join the African Transformation Movement, and why he left the ATM to join the EFF last year, and why he left the EFF to join MKP yesterday: he just can’t find a party willing to wreck the lives of the rural poor radically enough.
To his credit, he seems to be getting closer to his ideal scenario.
The EFF’s policy on land is fairly radical — it will all belong to the state, and you can lease some of it — but I can see how this system leaves itself open to terrible exploitation and abuse by nasty things like laws.
Yes, I can see why Manyi has joined his fourth party in six years. It sure beats selling Zuma’s book out of the boot of your car
MKP’s policy, on the other hand — that the land will be owned by the state but that its “custodian” will be your local “traditional leader” — is obviously better, since we can all agree that we want our entire lives dependent on the current mood of an unelected aristocrat who has been invited by president-for-life Zuma to redraft the constitution to make sure that the only higher authorities you can appeal to are God, Zuma or the guy who comes round to collect your monthly bribe.
Yes, I can see why Manyi has joined his fourth party in six years. It sure beats selling Zuma’s book out of the boot of your car.
For Malema, however, all of this is a very real setback. Still, he knows what he needs to do; which brings us to the second important truth he accidentally revealed on Thursday.
At the end of his press conference, he told his party that “the show must go on”. Because that’s what it is; what it’s always been. A show.
It’s been a great show, of course. The red uniforms and the full stadiums and the shooting of guns into the sky and that hydraulic lift raising Malema up like a resurrected Jesus Christ returning to the ANC — sorry, I mean, returning to heaven: they’re all great drama. But it’s still just a performance; a source of income for extremely well-paid actors.
Now, however, the star’s fairy dust is trickling away. The talk was all about sadness and mutual decisions, but Malema looks weak.
Announcing an emergency press conference at midnight to do damage control is one thing, but when you tell people that you’ll go on alone if you have to, you more often than not end up doing exactly that.
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