Nearly two months since Floyd Shivambu’s departure from the Economic Freedom Fighters and the leader Julius Malema has duly taken stock of the ‘betrayal’ and composed himself. In place of the morose expression, a straight face. A tamping down of the broadsides at anyone else who might wish to follow Shivambu out the door. But the blustering figure – big physically, bigger in infamy – who had ‘white monopoly capital’ sweating bullets as he conjured up the spectre of a tinpot African dictator is, at least by the estimation of this armchair critic, waning.
The numbers are thinning. Juju was once a reliable audience-rouser, nowadays one never knows what to expect. One partly suspects Shivambu’s exit has contributed more to the degeneration than the CIC would care to admit. Like the playground bully known to command fear and respect, until one ‘victim’ has the nerve to stand up to him, suddenly opening the floodgates for others to try their luck. It’s hard for an emperor to come back when he has been spotted butt-naked.
Since the May election, it has been Annus Horribilis for the Red Brigade. The self-styled ‘government in waiting’ which had on a worst-case-scenario aimed to at least dethrone the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), instead eked out a fourth place showing, unceremoniously ousted by a barely-six-month-old political get-go this last election. Now Shivambu, summed-up by most analysts as generally a smart chap with a knack for policy development, has tossed his lot with this newbie and Juju has been swift to play it down: ‘we are doing much better now, without him.’ Reality, however, paints a different picture.
In two months his party will be heading to an elective conference, the first where exists the legitimate possibility of others calling the bluff on the revolutionary bonhommie. You’d remember Naledi Chirwa, the EFF MP who was fined for her absence in Parliament for the budget speech on 21 February. She would later claim that her absence was owed to her sick newly-born child. Not long after her public apology, she found her name stone last in the party’s list of candidates in the May general election. Malema would attribute her positioning (many called it a ‘demotion’) to a democratic party process but the court of public opinion wasn’t so sure.
The fallout would entrench the suspicion in some quarters that Malema’s leadership proclivities were nakedly dictatorial. So too his arbitrary decision that no matter what the EFF constitution said of defectors, the door would always be open to Shivambu. Such comments – even if they were later retracted – could not have sat well with an EFF that portrays itself as a home for the educated. Who’s to say that individuals like Shivambu were merely playing to the CIC’s whims inasfar as the GNU was concerned when deep down they actually yearned to be part of it?
Outside of Malema’s party issues, the political landscape is paved with talk of growing the economy and throwing a few baddies in jail, and the anti-revolutionary messaging doesn’t – outside of the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) – carry as much gravitas. It seems that economic livelihood has taken precedence to political platitudes. In its formative stages, when the Government of National Unity (GNU) had opened the door to ‘the rats and mice,’ Malema had presumed an upgrade into kingmakership. Confidently, he walked into these with a cocky air driving a hard bargain as he endorsed Shivambu to the finance ministry, but has since been chucked out the window, very far from the spoils of Cabinet. Even further from the boondoggle.
It must sting a bit to one of Malema’s temperament. Ramaphosa, the billionaire president who supposedly crooks the knee to unseen white principals and could not possibly be the spokesperson of the marginalised proles, is, surprisingly, faring pretty well as captain of the GNU. In what was a doubtful long game, he’s since roped in the most unlikely bedfellows and even those who haven’t openly said so, appear grateful for the nod.
When it seemed – following the appaling May ballot – the ANC would call for his head, they have since stepped out of the Gucci slippers, mostly happily jumping into the new linen. Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton Mckenzie has not passed up the opportunity to thank the Buffalo and to point out that those who take a dim view of the new arrangement do so because they have been left out in the cold. The DA’s John Steenhuisen is grinning big, flashy suits and all. The Freedom Front Plus’s Pieter Groenewald is staging raids in a bid to show that there’s a new sheriff in the corridors of incarceration. Leon Schreiber’s promising to turn the home affairs department into a ‘Home Affairs from Home,’ where users may not need to visit a physical building for routine services in the future.
Everybody seemingly wants to be seen to be working, even though, according to Daily Maverick, ‘signed ministerial performance agreements still seem some way off.’ Regardless, nobody wants to be upstaged by their normative ‘colleagues’ in government but essentially their political nemeses. Not even MK, who are clearly slogging overtime to legitimise their more ‘corrupt or compromised’ leaders and expose the GNU as a regrettable slight against the Mass Democratic Revolution.
Even the big union COSATU, infantilized into yesmen in the Tripartite Alliance, only to be entirely emasculated in the ‘nine wasted years’ have seemingly regained their libido. On Monday, 7 October, they called for a national strike mainly aimed at joblessness and high interest rates among a list of issues. A noble move, but whether staying away from work on the day where everyone is gauging the 100-day mark of this unlikely government, which will obviously affect the common worker more than the beurocratic cheeseboys was not the counterintuitive thing to do, who knows?
One thing is clear, the GNU is wading knee-deep through both vilification and acceptance. Somehow, it seems even the pessimists have come to terms that – while certain groupings were bent on nipping it in the bud before it could get going – the GNU had to learn to walk before it could crawl. So far, though, the main ous seem to be getting on fine. Lots of promises and handshakes before the cameras, however the results are still a reminder of where we’ve been languishing for at least the last 15 years.