JAUNDICED EYE
The recent defection of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Deputy President Floyd Shivambu to uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party is a reminder that political waters run deep and murky. And the murkier the water, often the more elaborate and far-fetched the media’s opinions ventured on what lurks there.
As a commentator, since one is interpreting the world for others, it’s tempting to put a gloss of certainty on what is often simply one’s gut feeling. It’s flattering to think of oneself as the journalistic equivalent of a surgeon: making an incisive intellectual slice here, a deft causal splice there. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
But because the getting and keeping of power is usually such an ugly, amoral business, the analysis of breaking events is sometimes, in my experience, more like watching the local farm veterinarian at work than a matter of clinical precision. An awful amount of time is spent sticking one’s arm shoulder-deep into the beast’s nether-end orifices to palpate an unexpected and puzzling growth. And often the only result of this messy process is a smelly upper limb and a baffling uncertainty as to whether or not the new manifestation is malignant.
This is a fair depiction of Shivambu’s situation. The press has spent an entire week agreeing that this is a jolly important development but is seemingly uniformly puzzled about the exact significance or what long-term effect this will have on the health of either party. If any.
Some are of the view that Shivambu’s departure is a potentially fatal blow to the EFF. It’s already a party on its back foot following its poor performance in the May election, when it had to surrender to MK its vanguard role as the enfants terribles of South African leftist politics.
According to this school of thought, not only has the EFF lost its leading (sole?) political theorist and house intellectual but MK, hitherto no more than a personality cult, will with Shivambu gain someone who can garb its incoherent policies in some flattering Marxist-Leninist frocks.
Among the fans of Shivambu’s supposed intellectual prowess is Verashni Pillay, former editor-in-chief of Mail & Guardian and the now defunct Huffington Post SA. Shivambu, she enthuses on X, is “legitimately incredibly smart”, with “an incredible ability to think deeply around ideological issues”.
While not wanting to excuse his involvement in the looting of VBS and assaulting journalists, Pillay says she is “sad about this outcome” because Shivambu is “an incredibly valuable politician” and it is “kind of crazy” that the EFF has allowed him to slip through their fingers to MK, where she fears his incredibly clever views won’t carry the same weight.
First of all, it’s difficult to see how Shivambu’s alleged intellectual sophistication has improved a party that is best known for its racism, intimidation, and acts of violence. Ever since its foundation, the EFF’s stance on any issue has been based on populism, driven by Malema’s unerring instinct for soundbites that the mainstream media will magnify while feigning to be appalled.
Historically, there’s not been much ideological steadfastness to be seen. The EFF conspicuously has been driven by political expediency. Its support, opposition and then support again for the convicted criminal, former President Jacob Zuma, as well as the impeached former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, are just two examples of a party that flip-flops instantly at the whim of its emotionally erratic leader.
Secondly, the EFF is no less oriented around a single person than MK. While the bond between Julius and Floyd goes back to 2013 when they were both expelled from the African National Congress for indiscipline, it is Malema who has always been the unchallenged top dog. Malema rules as an absolute despot, ruthlessly and instantly culling from the organisation anyone who displeases him, while Shivambu thinks deep thoughts and pours the tea.
Another well-aired theory is that Shivambu’s defection is all a ruse. He is, according to this narrative, the EFF’s very own sleeper agent, inserted into MK to be activated at a later date to depose Zuma and unite the so-called progressive forces under the EFF banner. Given that this scenario rests on a twofold implausibility — that the EFF leadership combines not only exceptional cleverness and remarkable cunning, but that MK is fatally stupid and naive — it seems on available evidence extremely unlikely.
After all, Zuma has since his 2017 ousting by Cyril Ramaphosa shown himself more than a strategic match for his opponents. Despite almost universal scepticism over its prospects, it was Zuma’s six-month-old MK that came from nowhere to get 15% of the vote, pushing the EFF under 10% and the ANC from 58% to barely 40%, and in doing so upended a political constellation that had been unchanged for 30 years.
The elaborate theories are junk. By far the most likely explanation for Shivambu’s resignation is the most prosaic: personal ambition.
Shivambu has always in public played the part of the self-effacing helpmeet always at Malema’s side — the two are implicated in the R2 billion swindle that collapsed VBS Mutual Bank — but always deferential to his leader’s enormous ego. However, some within the EFF who have tired of their Commander-in-Chief’s Genghis Khan-style leadership and apparently have long been whispering seductively in 2IC Shivambu’s ear. Like Macbeth, his ambitions have been fanned.
The recent negotiations to form a Government of National Unity (GNU) reportedly brought further friction.
The Sunday Times, quoting “well-placed” but unnamed sources in the EFF, ANC and MK, writes that Shivambu and other EFF leaders were negotiating a GNU participation deal with the ANC which would have included Shivambu getting a Deputy Minister of Finance position. Malema however upset the apple cart by secretly approaching Ramaphosa directly, hoping to snaffle for himself the post of Second Deputy President in the GNU. The same that he has since denounced as the creation of White Monopoly Capital.
“The mixed messages from the EFF led to a deadlock between it and the ANC and the eventual collapse of their negotiations. Shivambu, who was also the party’s Chief Whip, felt Malema had betrayed and ‘disrespected’ him,” the paper claimed. Also, if this version of events is true, Shivambu would undoubtedly feel mightily pissed off at missing appointment to a powerful Cabinet position that has instead gone to the Democratic Alliance’s Ashor Sarupen.
The bad blood between Shivambu and Malema will delight the DA and ANC. The radical left is currently dispersed between MK, the EFF and a third group still hunkering down in the ANC waiting to see the way the wind blows. The greatest threat to the survival of the GNU is if these natural allies unite.
Shivambu’s exit will slow that process. The process will be further impeded if, as seems likely, Shivambu and Malema are criminally indicted over the VBS fraud.
It’s setting up to be a prosecutor’s wet dream: two men who know one another’s darkest secrets and are now in bitter rivalry. Who will be the first to seek judicial indemnity with the promise of ratting out the other?
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