A FAMOUS GROUSE
THERE go the Redshirts’ brains. That, in a nutshell, was the commentariat’s response to Floyd Shivambu’s sudden departure from the Economic Freedom Fighters last week to join Jacob Zuma’s Mkhonto we Sizwe Party.
But, as go the brains, so too go the Redshirts, and we could be witnessing the beginning of the end for Julius Malema’s fractious fighters.
Being a clever, it’s said that Fraud’s defection from the party he co-founded with Juju has given Convict Number One’s grumbling tribesmen and ultra-nationalists a much-needed intellectual boost. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Forecasts of a dramatic IQ spike in KwaZulu-Natal may however be premature. Mzwanele “Jimmy” Manyi has also deserted the EFF to join MKP. Intellectual advancement has accordingly been nullified and an equilibrium of sorts has been restored.
Manyi, it is safe to say, is not a clever. His most significant contribution to public discourse came in February 2011 when, as Cabinet spokesman, he claimed there were too many Coloureds in the Western Cape and that they ought to spread out a bit.
In the furore that followed, the Democratic Alliance release a video of Manyi telling a 2010 meeting of Indian business people that they had “bargained their way to the top”. Not for nothing did Trevor Manuel, then minister in the presidency, accuse Manyi of being a racist in the “mould of HF Verwoerd”.
Despite all this, and so much more, Manyi did enjoy Zuma’s considerable protection. A loyal fanboy, he was parachuted into various government roles as a “specialist adviser” before becoming a member at the Saxonwold Shebeen, a Gupta stooge and a brazen enabler of state capture. This then was his version of black economic empowerment, a field in which he claimed some expertise.
It is Manyi, therefore, who may now have finally found his true political home after much to- and fro-ing in recent years, whoring from one Mickey Mouse party to the next — and not Shivambu.
The latter was not a Zuma fanboy. There is a long history of hostility here, It was dramatically on display at an ANC general council meeting in September 2010, when Malema, then ANC Youth League president, and Shivambu, the league’s spokesman, openly attacked the dithering Zuma and the party’s leadership for their lacklustre commitment to radicalism.
Expelled from the party in February 2012, Malema and Shivambu then launched the EFF. The upstarts secured a significant foothold in the National Assembly in the 2014 elections — 25 MPs no less — and continued their campaign against Zuma.
According to journalist Mondli Makhanya, Shivambu’s attacks on uBaba were particularly effective. Writing in City Press, he suggests Shivambu expressed “his disdain for Zuma much more articulately than the volatile Malema” and was “uncompromising in his contempt”.
“Hence,” Makhanya notes, “the shock and horror when [Shivambu] decided to abandon the party he co-founded and his once-dearest friend for the man he is known to despise intensely.”
There has been much comment on the break-up of the “bromance”, with the defection even labelled a “divorce drama”. Malema, himself, has expressed the pain he felt:
“To me, he is not just a comrade but a brother and he will remain a brother, even when he pursues his political career differently. We formed this organisation together … I felt the same pain when I received the news of the passing of my mother. This is a testing moment. An organisation that has lived beyond ten years has been through a testing moment.”
Reading between the lines here, Juju’s “real pain”, if I may, is not as a result of any personal betrayal by a once loyal ally, but rather the realisation that, as far as his party is concerned, the game is up and irrelevancy beckons. To put it simply, Juju is aware that he’s cocked up — and this is what hurts. He has become the EFF’s greatest liability.
The “mercurial charisma” so beloved of political commentators when describing Malema’s appeal to the lumpen masses has now morphed into power-crazed paranoia. Consider how the commander-in-chief has turned on trusted lieutenants and loyalists in recent years, the most egregious example of this being the humiliating dismissal of the EFF’s KZN chairman, Vuzi Khoza, in August last year.
A skilled organiser, Khoza was responsible for the EFF’s phenomenal growth ahead of the 2019 elections, when its share of the vote rose from two to ten per cent. But he was dumped for failing to provide enough buses to transport supporters from the province to attend the EFF’s birthday celebrations in Johannesburg in July 2023. Khoza has since been welcomed by Zuma’s MKP.
Other EFFnik “stalwarts” have suffered a similar fate. In their place, though, the party has welcomed into its ranks such grubby individuals like my old friend, the boulevardier Carl Niehaus, and the disgraced former public protector, Busisiwe “Law Unto Herself” Mkhwebane.
Both of these useless individuals are now MPs, drawing a salary from the public purse while dribbling fealty on social media to the man-child Malema. But, unlike Shivambu, they are in no position to challenge the CIC’s authority in any way, shape or form.
Such has been the purging and merging that has effectively reduced the EFF to a one-man band it is surprising that references to Stalin and Trotsky have yet to appear in reports of this ongoing saga.
Shivambu, meanwhile, does seem to have secured a more promising future for himself in MK. He brings a certain intellectual heft to a party Makhanya has described as a “rag-tag collection of state capture veterans, disaffected public servants, disillusioned former ANC leaders, tenderpreneurs, greenhorn political adventurers and Zuma groupies”.
Shivambu could prove instrumental in paving the way for a resurgent African populism in 2026 and 2029. The next five years are going to be decisive, the News24 commentator Carol Paton has argued. Shivambu has boosted MK’s prospects of electoral success in this regard. She writes:
“As the forces of populism grow and the support for centrist forces diminishes, it is the last chance now to make market-friendly, capitalist policies work for all South Africa's people. To say that they have not worked until now because they have not been properly implemented (this is true) is as strong an argument as it is for a socialist to explain that socialism failed in the USSR because it was not real socialism.
“Both are true, but neither is persuasive. The case has to be made in practice so that people feel tangible improvement in their lives.”
Shivambu claims to be an avowed revolutionary. He has even cultivated some facial hair to to drive home the point — although his fuzzy jawline does rather give him the appearance of a demented 19th century Calvinist preacher.
He is also a nasty piece of work, given to fits of rage, lashing out at journalists, even allegedly assaulting them. He led the shameful charge against the ANC’s so-called “Indian cabal”, former public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan and former Treasury director-general Ismail Monomiat, were the true puppet masters in control of government.
That aside, one glaring contradiction dominates our perception of Shivambu: the Marxist-Leninist sporting fancy Italian loafers with worker’s overalls. The dedicated champion of the wretched and forsaken who, through the looting of VBS Mutual Bank, has helped himself to the savings of South Africa’s poorest pensioners. This, at least, is something that he does share with Zuma.
As for Malema, well, we can expect more noise in the months ahead. But little else.
It must be the way they tell ‘em…
Judges and experts in the funny arts have selected the 15 best one-liners from the stand-up comedians who performed at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. They are:
“Growing up rich is a hereditary condition. It affects one per cent of people.”
“Keir Starmer looks like an AI-generated image of a substitute teacher.”
“Gay people are very bad at maths. We don’t naturally multiply.”
“I’ve got a girlfriend who never stops whining. I wish I’d never bought her that vineyard.”
“I’m an extremely emotionally needy non-binary person: my pronouns are ‘there there’.”
“The conspiracy theory about the moon being made of cheese was started by the hallouminati.”
“My partner told me that she’d never seen the film Gaslight. I told her that she definitely had.”
“I wanted to know which came first the chicken or the egg so I bought a chicken and then I bought an egg and I think I’ve cracked it.”
“British etiquette is confusing. Why is it highbrow to look at boobs in an art gallery but lowbrow when I get them out in ‘Spoons?” [For the uninitiated, “Spoons” is the nickname of the cut-rate Wetherspoons pub chain.]
“My dad used to say to me ‘Pints, gallons, litres’ — which, I think, speaks volumes.”
“I love the Olympics. My friend and I invented a new type of relay baton: well, he came with the idea, I ran with it.”
“I sailed through my driving test. That’s why I failed it.”
“Ate horse at a restaurant once — wasn’t great. Starter was all right but the mane was dreadful.”
“I’ve been taking salsa lessons for months, but I just don’t feel like I’m progressing. It’s just one step forward, two steps back.”
“I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it.”
This last gag was voted the Funniest Joke of the Fringe. Its delighted author, Mark Simmons, told The Times, “I needed some good news as I was just fired from my job marking exam papers. I can’t understand it, I always gave 110 per cent.”
Here at the Slaughtered Lamb (“Finest Ales & Pies”), regulars say there was a time, not too long ago, when stand-up was considered the new rock ’n’ roll, when comedians challenged the status quo with material that mocked cant, excoriated hypocrisy and pushed the boundaries of satire. But no longer, it seems.
A fear of offending, perhaps, and the very real prospect of being cancelled may have put paid to all that. Shem.
