Paul Shipale
After Former EFF Deputy President Nyiko Floyd Shivambu’s decision to leave the Red Berets for uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party, addressing a press conference on Thursday, EFF leader Julius Malema attempted to put on a brave face saying this was not the end of the road for the EFF. Malema expressed his disappointment at Shivambu’s resignation from the party when it has been deemed to be at its weakest since its formation in 2013.
Shivambu’s departure left a leadership vacuum in the EFF and put the party in an even tougher position leading up to its elective conference in December and the 2026 local elections as the EFF has lost one of the brains behind the party as Shivambu was key in drawing up the party’s founding documents – its constitution and seven cardinal pillars – and an important figure in shaping its policy.
The popular EFF Students Command was his brainchild and has given the ANC-aligned South African Students Congress a run for its money in universities across South Africa. As EFF deputy president, Shivambu was also the party’s head of governance and oversaw its strategy in local government. His role gave him power to deploy members internally and in government and as chief whip of the party, he ran the show for the EFF in Parliament.
Most importantly, Shivambu’s decision to leave the Red Berets for uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party could help address MK’s turbulence which would harm the EFF. The MK party’s manifesto launch this year was held at the Orlando Stadium, which was filled to capacity. The party has since struggled to articulate what it stands for.
With his experience of 11 years in the EFF, Shivambu can assist MK in shaping its policy and developing a working party constitution. In fact, it has been announced that Shivambu is now MK’s national organizer, a role which would see him building the party’s structures, especially its branches.
Meanwhile, Malema has reassigned the EFF party’s responsibilities previously held by Shivambu to secretary general Marshall Dlamini, who will also serve as the EFF’s chief whip in parliament, while Malema’s office will oversee the governance task unit.
Malema also hit back at his detractors and said to EFF defectors: “We will not beg anyone to stay, those who want to leave, must leave”. The Daily Maverick newspaper understands that the party’s national chairperson, Veronica Mente, and deputy secretary-general, Poppy Mailola, have strong ties with Shivambu, which could cause rifts among the party’s top brass.
It seems a disagreement of approach in the negotiations with the government of national unity (GNU) was a major contributing factor that led to the sudden resignation of Shivambu as the straws that broke the camel’s back.
Contrary to Malema’s demeanour which was sombre when Shivambu announced his resignation from the party, this time around he came out guns blazing with gloves off like a big, black, bear ready to fight. Malema revealed that he was not involved in the discussions about GNU and was only contacted after the negotiations had collapsed. He denied ever requesting a deputy president position from President Cyril Ramaphosa and reiterated his stance against joining the GNU with the DA and FF Plus involved. The only name Malema said he had put forward was EFF MP Veronica Mente, suggested for the role of Deputy Speaker in Parliament. He also supported Shivambu for the position of minister of finance.
As such, the EFF is at a critical juncture as it grapples with heightened internal tensions. Following the sudden departure of Shivambu, the party faces pressing questions of loyalty and unity as Malema warns that silence amid criticism amounts to betrayal.
During a ground forces meeting in Soweto on Monday evening, Malema delivered a stern warning to EFF members who remain silent during attacks on the party, labelling them as “enemies within” and urged those contemplating leaving the party to do so immediately.
Since alliterations are back in style in such a cutesy demure way, one wonders if Malema is simply trying to be a vindictive vile villain violating voters’ vision like Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett said at the DNC? Or is he a small Idi Amin Dada in red overalls?
According to the Daily Maverick newspaper of 16 July 2024, the EFF’s Central Command Team full of photogenic bad boys in March 2019, won the most significant victory of its then five-year history: it forced the hand of the ANC, which voted for an EFF-promulgated parliamentary motion to crack open section 25 of the Constitution. Land expropriation without compensation was now upon South Africa, for better or worse. And the EFF could rightfully insist that they owned that piece of national policy. If time stopped at that moment, the EFF could’ve been considered a success, at least by their own self-professed standards.
So, how did a party that was handed such a significant victory lose momentum so quickly? The short answer, of course, is that the Zuma window had closed. But then again, Malema opened the window in the first place. Lest we forget, to his eternal credit/shame, Malema’s Zuma boosterism was one of the important factors in the 2007 palace coup that ousted Thabo Mbeki.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see that it all started coming apart during the dawn of The New Dawn. This brand of emptiness increased over the course of the New Dawn’s first year, and calcified through the pandemic and into the bad latter years of Ramaphosa’s first administration.
The amateurish banging a hard hat against a parliamentary table demanding Zuma “pay back the money”; is bad politics for an opposition party — Malema became the Flip-Flopper-in-Chief or what others call “the Malema oxymoron”. This looks like what Frantz Fanon called cognitive dissonance which occurs when a person’s behavior and beliefs do not complement each other or when they hold two contradictory beliefs. It’s another one of those core inconsistencies that reminds us of Malema’s central political problem that no one believes his antics and rantings any more.
Malema does not truly believe in Marxism-Leninism nor does he believe in the weapons of theory of Amical Cabral, the ideas of Thomas Sankara and the Pan-Africanists. Instead, he is another Gucci-wearing leader who pretends to be a Pan-Africanist and believes the government should nationalise the banking industry, businesses, mines, take peoples’ properties by force, and so much more that would undermine a young democracy.
Gauteng Premier, who is also the ANC provincial chairperson, Panyaza Lesufi said that the conflict between Shivambu and Malema was because “there are no elders in the EFF”. “We must learn what I call maintenance of generational mix”. That is why I concur with the SWAPO’s former MPs who are gearing up for a political comeback, lest we find ourselves in the shoes of our neighbours with missed opportunities and a lot of adventurism.
We need a perfect balance and generational mix in the top echelons of leadership in the country probably with a female President, a male/Herero vice-President, a male/Kavango PM with a female/Nama deputy PM. A female Speaker with a male from Zambezi Region Deputy Speaker and others such as a female from Zambezi Region’s Chief of Protocol etc.
Like Lesufi, I believe that the departure of EFF former deputy president to the MK (uMkhonto weSizwe) party, cannot be seen as a nonentity but should be analysed critically instead of quickly celebrating forgetting that parties in our country too are going through similar problems.
We have seen this with the resignation on 9 April 2024 of Vipuakuje Muharukua from the Popular Democratic Movement’s (PDM), a party he served as chief whip in Parliament when he entered the National Assembly at the age of 31 on the PDM’s ticket in 2014. We have also seen this with the resignation on 04 June 2024 of Henny H. Seibeb from the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), a political party he formed alongside Bernadus Swartbooi in December 2016 and served as its Deputy Leader and Chief Strategist as well as LPM Chief Whip in Parliament.
Last month, we heard about the resignation on 01 July 2024 of political activist Michael Amushelelo from the Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters (NEFF) party which he joined in 2022 and was appointed as the party’s commissar for economic freedom.
With the upcoming SWAPO Party’s electoral college slated for 6 to 8 September 2024, where the party is set to elect its 96 prospective members of the National Assembly for 2025 to 2029, as the temperature heats up in the electoral college, or ‘pot’, as it is known, many SWAPO Party members are gearing up to come out of the ‘pot’ which is seen as the pathway into the legislative chambers and mainstream politics.
It is for this reason that Emma Theofelus’ return to Parliament, through the SWAPO Party Youth League (SPYL), faced an obstacle as some within the SPYL were allegedly throwing spanners in her works, after the youth league’s National Executive Committee (NEC) voted her out of the race. Theofelus is now allegedly hoping to secure a place in the SWAPO ‘pot’ with the help of the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW).
It was the late President Geingob who catapulted Theofelus into the National Assembly when he appointed non-voting members to Parliament and some into the Cabinet. Even though, according to Article 32 of the Namibian Constitution, it is the prerogative of the President to appoint non-voting members to the National Assembly by virtue of their special expertise, status, skill or experience, the appointment of Emma Theofilus, without going through the SPYL structures, was seen as a vote of no confidence by the late President Geingob in the SPYL leadership.
Now it seems the SPYL has an axe to grind and expect Theofilus to go back to Parliament through the same way she came in and not through SPYL structures. That is why the late President should have consulted the party’s structures, including the SPYL, when he appointed non-voting members to Parliament and not simply appoint those close and loyal to him. This is what brought the current impasse, including slate politics with the former ‘team Harambee’ and ‘team SWAPO’.
What is important is that one must always strive to avoid battles of attrition in which one loses more than one can gain or break even, according to Mao Tse-tung who has provided a seminal masterly summary of the strategy and tactics of the struggle on opportunism and adventurism.
This confluence of circumstances present us a unique opportunity to forge a social compact and move the country forward and to greater heights with strategic centre of power commanding both authority and legitimacy. These must deriving from the qualitative ideas arising from both theory and praxis of the intelligentsia, professionals, workers, women and young people with their lightning rod for positive disruptive change, despite their impatience and imprudence, as well as the business community in a relation of cooperation and contestation and unity and struggle, of all the motive forces in a generational mix. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
