As President Cyril Ramaphosa and his team receive accolades for their largely exemplary war against Covid-19, the EFF — ordinarily the ANC’s most strident critic — has mostly been invisible, inept and ill-advised, and has missed out on holding government to account on a plethora of crucial issues.
Yet the future may very well belong to the EFF. All the party has to do at this time is lie in wait. It may inherit the future not because of its political prowess but because of the conditions we will find ourselves in once the battles against the coronavirus are done.
When Covid-19 is defeated our economy will be in tatters. Parties like the EFF thrive in such conditions.
Nothing illustrates the EFF’s irrelevance at this time (and its pursuit of relevance in the wrong places) quite like its antics regarding one DJ Shimza. Readers of these august pages may not be acquainted with the deejay, but perhaps they should be. He has played gigs in places that range from Mexico to the party hotspot of Ibiza, Spain.
Last weekend an up-and-coming deejay asked Shimza to give him a slot on his popular "lockdown party", which is broadcast live to hundreds of thousands of television viewers every weekend. Shimza snapped that the whippersnapper must "stop harassing me, it’s annoying".
Twitter followers of the two men piled in, criticising Shimza for the rude and dismissive tone of his response. SA’s most successful DJ, Black Coffee, saw the exchange and stepped in to offer the aspirant a slot on his show. Throughout the weekend thousands of Twitter commentators condemned Shimza’s humiliation of the less-famous deejay until he apologised. Profusely.
EFF leader Julius Malema then posted his support for Shimza on Twitter: "Never be shaken by rubbish young man @Shimza01. You worked very hard to be where you are and can’t be destroyed by those who suffer from self-hate."
As is its modus operandi, the EFF will seek to blame rather than to build
Twitter, the platform where Malema and the EFF’s leaders often intimidate, insult, humiliate and pour scorn on opponents while being egged on by their huge orchestra of followers, came down on Malema like a ton of bricks. For 24 hours Malema was at the top of the trending list (more than 35,000 tweets were posted) with followers calling him inconsistent, a chameleon, confused and a mere Twitter celebrity. So relentless was the criticism that Malema lashed out: "You can go to hell."
Yes, that’s the leader of the third-biggest political party in SA telling his voters to go to hell.
On Sunday and Monday the trending hashtag on Twitter was #JuliusMustFall. It was a long way from the day last December when his followers knelt before him as though before a leader of a cult.
The pursuit of relevance in the wrong places has resulted in former EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi falling for antivaccine conspiracy theories and calling Bill Gates a university drop-out.
The stunt blew up in his face when it emerged that the Trevor Noah-Bill Gates interview he had referenced had not even touched on vaccines.
Yet do not take the EFF’s current vapidity and tepid performance to be a harbinger of future performance. The future may yet belong to the red berets.
The SA Reserve Bank expects GDP to contract by 6.1% in 2020. The coalition Business4SA says the economy could contract by 10% and over 1-million people could lose their jobs. Poverty will deepen, inequality will widen, unemployment will increase exponentially, crime will touch many more poor souls and desperation will visit many more households.
It is fertile ground for populists, and the EFF is nothing if not populist.
As we search for reasons for our afflictions and seek solutions to our many problems, the EFF will point fingers at colonialism, apartheid, the ANC’s post-1994 profligacy and corruption as the root of our difficulties. As is its modus operandi, it will seek to blame rather than to build. The poor will listen.
Periods of recession have given rise to many populists. World War 2 can be linked directly to recessionary conditions in the 1920s and 1930. It will be up to the EFF to decide whether it uses its sway in future for good or for narrow political interests.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.