A sea of red golfers, military styled caps and a mix of scowling and jubilant faces greet me as the cameras take me through the National People’s Assembly at the Nasrec Expo Centre. Dirges and the one-leg-up toi toi thunder at every nook, although it seems this is just more procedure than a party genuinely at peace with itself. A PR stunt to convince a dubious audience that indeed the EFF are still a force to be reckoned with and that the leader Julius Malema runs a tight ship.
‘Go tell that to the birds,’ I scribble down, after having looked over my shoulder to make sure no hostile eyes are leering. In these situations, journalists know the drill. Best not ask about the Breitling watches, the luxury SUVs, or why the CIC criticizes white monopoly capital only to move into a neighbourhood known to be particularly, uhm, white, and wears the moniker of Africa’s ‘richest square mile.’ Ah! VBS – you’re probably harbouring a death wish aren’t you, pal. No need to be a counter revolutionary – listen, nod and write your fluff piece if you don’t want to be called a Stratcom agent.
I glance up at the leadership. It’s lean, lots of backbenchers, the bigwigs (outside of Gardee, Dlamini and Malema) nowhere to be seen. No Shivambu, no Mpofu, no Mkhwebane – the big guns are on hiatus or on permant leave. But something tells me there might be a toy R-5 somewhere under the long tables, so don’t ask anything about the elephant that’s not in the room, namely Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi.
Depending on who you listen to, Ndlozi has either decided to sit this one out or Malema has instructed him to stay at home. The conference will go on well enough without him. Perhaps his absence allowed him to dodge a bullet or two. The good Doctor has become something of a latrine ever since Floyd left the party and the doctor’s significant other happened to ‘like’ that moment on social media. So much muck rained down on him that he didn’t even make the 66-member central command team (CCT), the party’s highest decision-making body between conferences.
Unlike the firebrand Shivambu, perhaps his options are limited and there’s no one who wants to be seen consorting with what Gayton Mckenzie once labeled an ‘ice boy’. Perhaps Ndlozi is daring Malema to sack him for a no-holds-barred showdown at the CCMA. A chance to prove that he’s no fong-kong Dr by representing himself and taking the party to the cleaners. Perhaps.
As for Juju himself, things aren’t looking too good. The paunch midsection is gone. The press wonders if he will ever regain his penchant for delivering punchy, Mugabe-esque soundbites. He looks morbid, no longer so cocksure. So much so that he spoke for more than three hours, becoming visibly emotional at some point and admitting to attacks from within. In the main, though, he appears angry at Floyd, at the press who ask questions about Floyd, the MKP that swallowed up Floyd and a South Africa that think that the EFF is dead now that Floyd is gone.
Or perhaps we have been kind on the Red Brigade. In truth, the demise started long before then but became apparent in May when the party was unceremoniously knocked down from the third biggest party to fourth place by an upstart that barely had a proper manifesto. Back then Malema himself said something to the effect that the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) were like family to the EFF. Now, that admission has proved that the version of afro-nationalism most popular in many quarters is the one led by the Zulu patriarch Jacob Zuma than the young Julius Malema. In many ways Malema is the EFF and with Shivambu and Ndlozi at his side always made for united, youthful optics. Three young, educated, eloquent black men who didn’t keel before Stellenbosch was something that many felt compelled to get behind. It was in essence a party of populism and personalities than ideology and sound economic policy. So now that the big characters are gone, they leave behind what some may describe as duds who lack the revolutionary fervour of their predecessors. Because of this, one could expect the ranks of MKP to balloon, this while Malema is abandoned or – given some of Shivambu’s utterances – suffers a mutiny. I wouldn’t count on much of a merry Christmas in a certain village in Seshego, Limpopo, this year.
Somewhere in a suburb of the Western Cape, a certain woman is grinning big. John Steenhuisen may be the Democratic Alliance (DA) leader but the person who’s working the strings is no doubt the Chairperson of the Federal Council, Helen Zille. Those early communiques from the party in the lead up to the formation of the GNU were classic Zille – succinct, highly intellectual and were bent on a fair deal and never, ever, kissing butt. Between trying to ensure that her party isn’t marginalised in the GNU, she’s been busy shooting down daggers aimed at her personality.
Last week she reminded the City Press readership that she’s an old hat in the world of letters and anybody brave enough to take broadsides at her should not expect her to take them lying down. Last month it was that broadsheet’s editor-in-chief, Mondli Makhanya’s turn but it was Kay Sexwale who suffered the brunt of her wrath this month. In an open letter Sexwale accused Zille of sowing ‘division within the ANC’s leadership collective,’ undermining President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership and prioritising imperialist narratives amongst a host of other lunges.
From the opening line, it was clear she was baying for blood: ‘Last Sunday City Press again decided to deprive South Africans of news and common sense.’ It would get more brutal for the paper. ‘I have tried very hard,’ continues Zille ‘to find a more delicate way of putting it, but I believe in plain speaking: Your readership is plummeting because of the bullshit you publish.’
Between questioning Sexwale’s credentials and the paper’s supposed inability to question the veracity of her claims, Zille throws about some strong language which makes for enjoyable Christmas reading. (Thank God it’s not behind a pay wall). Outside of that, these are familiar criticisms on the DA but given the bromances that have been spawned by the GNU, the commonalities seem to far outweigh the differences. The big parties seem to be fairing just fine but the smaller parties have struggled to stay afloat. Many of them were familiar faces on the news, now their names are all but forgotten. When last did you hear the name Songezo Zibi? There were big donations now some haven’t even made it to parliament. As for the once mighty EFF, the images of the latest conference tell a familiar, if not sadder story, of few numbers and a party on an inevitable decline.