The EFF, more than any other South African political party, embodies Otto von Bismarck’s quote: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable, the art of the next best.”
“Next best” may just be the key phrase if election polls are to be taken at face value. They suggest a significant rise in support for the party, peaking at about 20% in this year’s election — nearly double its support in 2019 and nudging the territory of the official opposition, the DA.
The Brenthurst Foundation placed support for the EFF at 18% after interviewing potential voters for a study released in October, while the most recent Ipsos poll suggests support for the EFF at between 17% and 19.6%, depending on turnout. As a point of reference, the DA is sitting at 23% and 20.5% in each of those polls.
It’s a big leap. The EFF’s support in its inaugural election in 2014 was 6.35%, growing to a respectable 10.8% in the 2019 general election. That made it the country’s third-biggest political party.
The red berets fared well in the 2016 local government election too. In the party’s first foray into local politics, it garnered 8.3% of the vote, growing its local support to 10.5% in the 2021 poll.
Suggestions that the EFF would leap from 10% to close to 20% support in the coming poll would mark a huge boost for the fledgling party, spelling a victory for populist, nationalist identity politics.
The potential surge has investors and business spooked.
Rightly so: the EFF’s grasp of public finances and proclivity for polarisation is alarming. For a start, there’s its own “utopian” vision of state-owned mines, nationalised banks, a “restructured constitution” and an aggressive increase in taxes paid by the wealthy.
Speaking during a KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) summer downpour at the party’s manifesto launch over the weekend, EFF leader Julius Malema declared that the party would increase social grants and support educated, unemployed young people with a monthly grant of R1,000 for matriculants, R3,000 for graduates and R4,000 for the unemployed with postgraduate qualifications. Miraculously, the EFF would also end load-shedding in six months.
He also loudly told the 50,000-strong crowd that the party would forge ahead with land expropriation without compensation, “criminalise” parents who fail to send their children to school, sanction raids on private homes in search of illicit weapons and roll the army into the streets to join the police in the fight against crime.
“We are going to strengthen this army, take it to the Western Cape where there are druglords, to help the police to fight crime ... We are going to have monthly parades with the police and soldiers,” Malema told thousands of supporters at Moses Mabhida Stadium in KZN.
“There will be an annual search of the properties of whites, blacks, Indians and coloureds ... there are too many guns in the hands of the people of this province.”
For none of these promises did Malema even nod in the direction of the devastating effects they would have on investment — or, indeed, of the need for economic policies that lure investment.
Treat with caution
The polls might be placing the EFF high — but it’s important to note, as Ipsos does, that there’s a long way to go until the election, and a lot can happen between now and then. Particularly as the bigger parties’ campaign machines have yet to kick into gear.
As Wits professor and political analyst Steven Friedman tells the FM, “the only real poll is on election day”. And, he adds, the EFF has always polled better before elections than it has performed come voting day.
By-elections show an interesting trend, even if they are to be treated with caution (they are sometimes skewed in favour of smaller parties, as they’re able to throw resources at these polls that they can’t muster at a national scale).
In these, independent political analyst Dawie Scholtz sees a party on the rise — though by how much is less certain. Since 2012, he says, the EFF has shown growth in by-elections in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West, the Northern Cape, the Free State and Limpopo. But it’s the hotly contested province of KZN that’s important for the EFF. “It’s the only place they are facing problems, while growing almost everywhere else,” he tells the FM.
“The by-elections support the thesis that they are on the up. They are also doing better among young voters, who registered a lot more than usual. I can’t say whether 18% is too high or not but they are definitely on the up.”
Friedman has his doubts. While by-elections are a good litmus test for elections, he believes the EFF will put on just a few percentage points. “The evidence I see makes me sceptical about an 80% jump.”
The Social Research Foundation (SRF) is also doubtful about any huge leap in support. Foundation associate Gabriel Makin says the SRF polling since 2022 has the EFF’s support at 12% at most.
“An interesting thing we looked at is the belief in democracy and the constitutional order. EFF voters are largely sceptical about democracy and the constitution. But what we found is that the vast majority of South Africans are happy with democracy and the constitution but would like the country to be run better.
“I can’t think of anything that will cause the EFF to enjoy a massive surge in votes. Most South Africans don’t want the kind of politics that burns the country down.”
The Zuma effect
You have to factor in tactical malleability — or political expedience, depending on how you look at it. This was a party that rose to prominence on an anti-corruption, anti-state-capture ticket, that now embraces those it so ardently fought against. It speaks to Malema’s uncanny ability to exploit internal ANC battles for his own political ends.
Take Jacob Zuma. Ahead of the former president’s resignation in 2018, the EFF was at the heart of the fight to have him removed from office. Then, it seamlessly changed tack and became the mouthpiece of the Zuma-supporting radical economic transformation (RET) faction — and the most ardent critic of Zuma’s arch-rival, President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Malema just this weekend called Ramaphosa a “sell-out” who is “white on the inside and black on the outside”.)
Which is why key figures aligned to the Zuma project are comfortably ensconced among EFF MPs in parliament. Among them are disgraced former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and Gupta lackey Mzwanele Manyi. Even Carl Niehaus — the hapless lapdog of former ANC secretary-general and RET doyen Ace Magashule — has unfurled himself from the colours of his own political project, the African Radical Economic Transformation Alliance, to don the fiery EFF mantle.
Now there’s Zuma and his green army, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party — and his renewed pretensions to power. On December 16, the man who led the country for nearly a decade entered the fray to “finish what he started”. In that, he’s provided a home for the disaffected RET grouping who were pushed out of the ANC or who jumped ship.
The party contested its first by-election in KZN last week, gobbling up a significant 19% of the vote — eating into the ANC’s vote share and obliterating the EFF. It is likely to do the same in parts of Gauteng and in the Free State, after Magashule joined the MK Party late last year.
Most importantly, it could dramatically change the political landscape in Zuma’s home province. The SRF this week released a poll, limited to KZN, that showed the MK Party making a real dent in ANC support. It polled the party at 24%, neck and neck with the IFP at 24% and with the ANC falling to 25%. The EFF stood at just 5%, against the respectable 9.7% it obtained in the provincial ballot in 2019.
Zuma, it is said, aims to unseat the ANC in KZN and nationally. He spoke in December about a “broad front of [purported] left-leaning parties”. It is an indication that the MK Party, the EFF and other nationalist formations such as the African Transformation Movement (ATM) and the Pan African Congress (PAC) are likely to work together against Ramaphosa’s ANC.
“That [working together] will definitely reconfigure the entire landscape,” political analyst Susan Booysen tells the FM. “We will have three blocs: the ANC and smaller parties such as the Patriotic Alliance and Good, the RET bloc including the MK Party, the EFF and others, and the multiparty charter with the likes of the DA and IFP. If the ANC falls significantly below 50%, where it can’t govern the country with the smaller parties, it will have to make some serious choices.”
The FM has ascertained that the ANC is preparing for the possibility that these parties will work together. “The agenda is to get the ANC below 50%. They [the parties] will then demand the removal of Ramaphosa [if they are] to engage the ANC in any coalition debate,” a source familiar with the plan tells the FM.
Leaders of both the ATM and PAC addressed the EFF’s manifesto launch over the weekend.
Stumbling blocks
For Friedman, the EFF/RET tie-up is simply a “family fight”, where the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”. But it could hurt the EFF among black middle-class voters in Gauteng, one of the party’s bases.
“Those who vote for the EFF are traditional ANC voters who do not want to vote ANC any more,” he says. “But there were some middle-class folk who would be put off by this new dynamic and would vote for other parties such as ActionSA or Rise Mzansi, for instance.”
There are other stumbling blocks along the way. For one, the political goings-on in other provinces could harm the EFF. Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA is making strides in his home province, Limpopo, while the Patriotic Alliance is putting up a strong challenge among opposition parties in the Northern Cape.
Limpopo is also a focus of the ANC. Party insiders tell the FM that it has been quietly working in the province, where Ramaphosa has his roots, and it may surprise observers in the election. The “Ramaphosa factor” is considered an advantage by the party.
“Malema is no longer seen as the ‘son of the soil’ there, the place has changed dramatically since the last election; that anti-ANC appeal [of the EFF] has been neutralised to an extent,” a national executive council (NEC) member tells the FM.
Another issue is the EFF’s tie-up with the ANC in government itself — this will be the first election since it agreed to govern the metros of Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay with the ruling party. For the ANC in Gauteng, the move was intended to neutralise EFF support in the province; for the EFF, it was an opportunity to prove that it is capable of governing.
The pact with the ANC has comfortably elevated EFF leaders into crucial posts in these municipalities. But the results thus far are a mixed bag. Joburg and Nelson Mandela Bay have turned into disaster zones. Ekurhuleni seemed to be doing better, but even there the EFF is doing itself no favours.
The EFF leader in Gauteng, Nkululeko Dunga, holds the position of MMC for finance in the metro — which is set to lose its clean audit status, according to council insiders. This has prompted a violent response from Dunga, who attacked the office of the auditor-general, saying it was responsible for delays in concluding the city’s audit.
Dunga accused the AG, a crucial constitutional office and a rare bastion of excellence, of playing politics. Fortunately, the office is a stickler for the law, and it hit back, saying delays in finalising the city’s report were due to disputes raised by Dunga’s office.
The ANC in Ekurhuleni has pleaded with the provincial leadership under Panyaza Lesufi to end the relationship with the EFF, but its pleas have been ignored. Lesufi appears determined to tie up with the EFF, a likelihood in Gauteng after the polls, despite concerns expressed by the ANC’s NEC.
For Booysen, it all speaks to a “helter skelter” political positioning. “[The EFF] will do anything that will annoy and undermine the ANC. They walk around with a clear understanding that they should do what is necessary to do damage to the ANC, even if it means going to bed with them,” she tells the FM.
Inroads on the DA?
A factor potentially counting in the EFF’s favour is a surge in young people registering to vote. After the final voter registration weekend this month, about 1.2-million new voters were added to the voters roll. IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo told journalists that the number of registered people between 20 and 29 is now 4.3-million, with most new registrations coming from KZN, Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.
This is a significant reversal of the historic underrepresentation of young people, said Mamabolo.
Even ANC leaders concede that these new entrants are an unknown entity and it is unclear where they are likely to place their crosses.
The DA is confident that many of those registered are rooted in its support base. This, it surmises, is due to changes to the Electoral Act regarding where citizens are permitted to vote. For the first time in a general election, citizens can vote only at the voting stations where they registered — which would naturally be the closest one to their given address. The DA has drawn the conclusion that it has increased its share of new and reregistering voters based on an increase in registrations in its strongholds. It’s a sketchy determination, but one the DA has stuck to.
At its national conference last year, the DA was the first to sound the alarm about the growth of the EFF. Its then newly elected leader, John Steenhuisen, described the party as “enemy number one”. It was the basis for the formation of the “moonshot pact”, now called the multiparty charter. Steenhuisen had argued that an EFF/ANC coalition would be the worst possible election outcome for South Africa.
The DA, Ipsos has predicted, now faces the real challenge of being displaced by the EFF as the official opposition. But the DA appears unconcerned, with insiders telling the FM that its own internal polling places the EFF at just 10%, a slight decline from its 2019 performance.
Either way, the 2024 election marks a keen test for the EFF — it is likely to grow, but there remains a question mark over how much growth there will be. Whether its audacious ability to reinvent itself to suit power shifts and exploit factional battles within the ANC is acceptable to the electorate, or off-putting, will soon become clear. If it does grow significantly, the red berets may just have found the formula to bring down the 112-year-old ANC behemoth. If not, it will be back to the drawing board for Malema and his coterie.
As Booysen puts it: “We are indeed in wild and wonderful territory.”
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