"Malema et al are preternaturally good at identifying issues to maximise mobilisation and are excellent at ‘flying picket’ type organisation," Mr Borain said. More social unrest and they could rise further. But it could be anywhere from 1% to 8%." Independent political consultant Nic Borain also admits that forecasting the EFF vote is pure conjecture, but his estimates are rising and now stand at 3-5%. "On a very good day, if they can get their voters out, they might get 8% nationally. "The EFF will take voters from the ANC’s populist flank," Wits Business School political analyst William Gumede said. The mainstream dismisses the EFF as sloganeers, but the raw promise of change - irrespective of the ability to deliver it - has struck a chord with blacks fed up with waiting in dead-end townships for houses, jobs and sewers that never arrive. It also declines to release membership numbers. It says it has no major financial backers and funds itself through small donations and wholesaling party regalia.
"The Economic Freedom Fighters is a radical and militant economic emancipation movement," its website declares, outlining expropriation of land and nationalisation of the mines and banks without compensation as central policies. It formally launched - at Marikana - on Oct. The 32-year-old quickly found a political lifeline in the police killing of 34 strikers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in August last year, an incident that brought comparisons with the Sharpeville massacre by apartheid security forces in 1960.Ĭashing in on simmering worker discontent in the mines, which are still overwhelmingly owned and run by whites, and on public outrage at the shootings, Mr Malema formed a party with an unashamedly populist message to take on the ANC from the left. Mr Malema, who holds up Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe as a political model for his seizure of white-owned farms, was kicked out of the ANC 18 months ago, officially for ill-discipline -unofficially for challenging President Jacob Zuma. "There’s no proof but I think they’re the ones who killed the guy." The ANC denies it resorts to political violence and has called for tolerance and "good behaviour" from its members. "The ANC people are the ones who started this," said EFF activist Ruth Mogatwe, 30, at a wake a week later. No arrests have been made but the victim’s friends are in little doubt he died because of the colour of his beret. We want radical change." Ominously, at the height of the unrest, 20-year-old EFF activist Themba Khumalo was shot dead outside his tin shack by unknown gunmen. She is the best recruiting agent we’ve got," Mr Lefekane said. To the EFF activists feeding off the public frustration at the ANC’s perceived failings - corruption, inefficiency and arrogance - it was a gift. She had to be rescued from the mob and drive out in a police armoured vehicle. When provincial premier Nomvula Mokonyane went to try to calm the crowd, she made matters worse by telling them the ANC did not need Bekkersdal’s "dirty votes". "We are recruiting people every day," said Happy Lefekane, a 39-year-old EFF activist in Bekkersdal, a run-down township 40km west of Johannesburg which experienced a week of rioting last month over shoddy public services.Īlthough township riots are common - one major "service delivery protest" happens every two days, according to monitoring group Municipal IQ - the Bekkersdal uprising was notable for its intensity and explicit rejection of the ANC. The anger of the millions of blacks for whom life has changed little in the two decades since the end of white-minority rule has provide fertile hunting ground, and any EFF success is almost certain to be at the expense of the ANC, which won two thirds of the vote in the last election in 2009.
#RADICAL RACE GEAR FREE#
With the silver-tongued Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) only 100 days old and untested by any opinion poll, it is hard to say precisely how much effect they will have on 2014’s elections in Africa’s biggest economy.īut the garish shirts and red Che Guevara-style berets popping up in the sprawling townships and shanty towns of Johannesburg and Pretoria suggest the Fighters, as they like to be known, will make their mark in the first election for the born free generation - voters born after apartheid ended in 1994. While the yellow, green and black of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) remains dominant, it is the bright red of an ultra-leftist party founded by expelled ANC youth leader Julius Malema that is making the big splash. COLOUR has always been central to South African politics, but now, nearly 20 years after the end of apartheid, the tint of your T-shirt matters as much as that of your skin.
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