TOM EATON | Floyd name-checks ZCC, Church of Shembe not long after Bushiri visit — oh, boy ...

As political hand-me-down Floyd Shivambu on Thursday revealed his intention to form a new party, he denounced the EFF as a cult, suggesting that this famously slow learner has finally figured out the golden rule of cults: that the only way to make real money is to be Big Daddy all by yourself.

Certainly, as late as last year it was clear that Shivambu was still clueless about how cult economics actually work, eagerly abandoning Julius Malema and the EFF in favour of Jacob Zuma’s MK Party in the misguided belief that it might be a step upwards.

It was a bizarre miscalculation, especially from someone who was a graduate of both Zuma’s crony-infested ANC and Malema’s Ponzi scheme and should therefore have understood that the whole point of a personality cult is that it exists purely to serve the legal, financial and emotional needs of its founding member.

No doubt Shivambu’s heart went pitter pat when he was parachuted into the role of secretary-general, and it must have been nice to hear himself referred to as the intellectual of the party — which says it all, really — but there was no way he was ever going to become the Big Panjandrum of the MK Party, not with Zuma’s daughter and untold mates all lining up a discreet distance behind the old man.

By alienating both the EFF and MK Party, Shivambu is in real danger of becoming the Mmusi Maimane of the faux-revolutionary quasi-left; a shopsoiled B-lister trapped in a low-rent niche where the greatest political challenge is voter apathy.

Of course, it’s possible Shivambu always intended to leave MK Party after a while and was merely using his sojourn as a form of research, perhaps to study the various forms of sycophancy he might be able to demand from his own followers one day. It’s possible that, having seen enough kowtowing, ring-kissing, fart-catching and smoke-blowing to last a lifetime, he has become an aficionado in the debasement of supplicants and has already drawn up a list of the sort of things he wants to see once he mounts his own throne and the prostrations commence.

Either way, however, it seems that the penny has finally dropped, the apprenticeship is over, and Shivambu now wants to get paid.

At first glance, a new cult — Floydism? The Shimmering Shivambus? — looks like it might be a hard sell: by alienating both the EFF and MK Party, Shivambu is in real danger of becoming the Mmusi Maimane of the faux-revolutionary quasi-left; a shopsoiled B-lister trapped in a low-rent niche where the greatest political challenge is voter apathy.

Now that he’s learnt the finer point of faith-based entrepreneurship, however, it seems that Floyd might have found the one gap still left largely unexploited in our splintering politics: conservative rural Christianity.

As part of his preparations ahead of launching his party, Shivambu announced, he would be consulting with and tapping into “the wisdom of ordinary South Africans, including all the churches of Zion Christian Church of Nazareth Baptist Church” as well as figures like Patrice Motsepe, Kaizer Motaung and Irvin Khoza.

Taken alone, this might have been nothing but a bog-standard publicity grab, as Shivambu bathed himself in the entirely hypothetical and largely fictional support of a major church, some sports icons and a billionaire.

But let us not forget that this is also the man who met charlatan “prophet” Shepherd Bushiri at Easter, a meetup he knew would be heavily publicised and would ruffle all sorts of feathers but which he travelled to anyway.

Now throw in a very deliberate name-check of the ZCC, and this is looking like a man with a plan ...