Just over a month ago the nation woke up to news that the EFF’s president Julius Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu were willing participants in the VBS Mutual Bank heist. Investigative journalists had long been sniffing into the rot that saw the bank placed under liquidation in 2018 but now the juicy information was coming from an inside source: An affidavit from the bank’s chair, Tshifhiwa Matodzi, sentenced to an effective 15-year jail term for his part in the plundering from the country’s poor.
A month down the line, and Shivambu has turned his back on the party that signified an alternative – albeit an afro-nationalist, rowdy and belligerent one – to ANC political dominance and which marketed itself as a government-in-waiting, to now disintegrating in real time across social and mainstream media. Shivambu’s departure leaves Julius Malema openly resembling the sulking, paranoid dictator everyone always said he was. Surly, vindictive, the enfant terrible has stooped from dribbling the dotty Red Beret ball to an immature playing of the man … and the man’s woman!
Shivambu announced that he’d be tossing his lot with former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) at a press conference last week, leaving a visibly pained Malema clearly looking blindsided. Journalists clamoured to hear what he made of Shivambu’s departure. The faithful equally needed to know what this might bode for the party whilst detractors wondered if this was really the swansong of the party that has been cause for ‘chest pains’ amongst the business community and non-confrontational liberals.
Known for delectable Mugabe-ish soundbites, Juju’s appearances are a media buffet. The man himself is the eager host who plays to the gallery – flanked as he almost always is by Shivambu and the party top brass – leaving no doubt who exactly is calling the shots. Generally an unperturbed orator but when he was addressing the Gauteng Ground Forces this Monday, Malema was described as a man ‘spiraling,’ suffering a political meltdown, less interested in composing himself than taking broadsides at the ‘many others who will leave who are loyal to the deputy president.’
It must’ve all come like a shot in the dark for the man who’s likened his relationship with Shivambu to that of ‘blood brothers,’ despite reports doing the rounds that in the formative stages of the government of national unity (GNU) Malema was secretly trying to secure himself the country’s deputy presidency. Also that Shivambu was no longer his preferred candidate for the party deputy presidency.
Despite that many had said that Malema was an unreliable flip-flopper who’d sooner turn Mussolini and throw anyone who threatened his supremacy under the bus, Shivambu always played the part of the loyal soldier. Some would even reduce that loyalty to that of a lackey – an obsequious goon to a Mafia boss.
Given Malema’s openly sombre mood in the wake of Shivambu’s exit, the duo have clearly come a long way. If they were indeed unduly benefiting as Tshifhiwa claims, then there is clearly mutual reason for concern if the one decides to leave as the fallout could in the long-term prove to be mutually destructive. Each man is no doubt well aware of the other’s dirty laundry and a whisper into the ears of law enforcement and we may be faced with a corruption case not dissimilar to that of Schabir Shaik and Jacob Zuma.
History between Shivambu and Malema runs deep…
In 2010 as youngsters in the ANC Youth League, the duo infamously stormed the stage at the ANC National General Council in Durban ‘demanding that the ANC adopt radical policies such as nationalisation and expropriation without compensation.’ From there, their relationship with party leadership would deteriorate, leading to Malema’s expulsion and Shivambu ultimately opting to follow him out as they together went to found the EFF in 2013.
As such, Shivambu’s departure has seen Malema coming out guns blazing and nobody has been spared from his salvo. EFF Commissar Mbuyiseni Ndlozi’s wife, the prominent actress Mmabatho Montsho, whose sin was to ‘like’ a post by Shivambu on Instagram, has, at least in Malema’s reckoning, compromised her partner. ‘How can someone say,’ retaliated Malema, ”the decision to join uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) is the best decision ever taken” and my wife Manto is the first one to like such a thing, and you say “Julius is with us.”‘
In under a week, two prominent EFF MPs in the form of Shivambu and Jimmy Manyi have deflected, resulting in speculation that the floodgates have opened. The two will join an MKP in the middle of an internal crisis that saw some 18 MPs reportedly expelled from the party earlier this month. Popular logic has it that it is Jacob Zuma who handed MKP their astonishing showing at the May elections. The rest of the party leadership were virtual unknowns, inexperienced in top-tier politics and the party has since been in search for seasoned individuals to consolidate its name in Parliament.
Where else to recruit such people than from a party that even Malema was quick to say was – at least in ideology – like his EFF? It wouldn’t be hard to convince the ambitious Shivambu, just months ago hoping to be appointed to the finance ministry, that under the power-hungry Malema, his prospects would be stymied? He wouldn’t be able to break through the red ceiling as long as Malema was still the unchallengeable Commander in Chief.
Seen as the ‘EFF’s engine room,’ Shivambu is largely credited as the drafter of the party’s constitution and the brainchild behind its Students Command. No doubt these are precisely the sort of skills that are in short supply at his new home, which months after the general election is still functioning without a clearly-defined manifesto or policy document. Perhaps this is the motivation behind the MKP seemingly reaching out to him. Analysts agree that with this move, MKP are the biggest winner in the opposition front and despite Malema saying that his party’s constitution does not allow deflectors to return, the door will always be open to Floyd.
For Malema, this seemed like the closest he’s come to swallowing his pride. Analysts, however, were dubious. To them, the comment merely affirmed the popular narrative dogging the EFF. Simply that Malema runs it like his personal piggy bank and by unilaterally determining to bend constitutional prescripts for one man, he was simply reminding everybody that when Malema says ‘jump,’ everyone says is expected to say ‘how high.’ Whether the so-called intellectual coterie in the party ranks – Ndlozi amongst them – will dance to that tune much longer, many expect that answer to be forthcoming in the not too distant future.