EFF wins in publicity stakes

A party staging what its leaders called “the mother of all shutdowns” would surely let the numbers speak for themselves and not need to share fake or doctored images or videos to bolster their image?

Yet, that is what the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) did repeatedly on Tuesday as reality started biting and the millions of people it promised would take to the streets never materialised.

The EFF posted doctored photographs of mass crowds, pictures from the 2017 protests against Jacob Zuma, as well as a ludicrous video of buses in Cape Town with the claim that these were empty – and in Pretoria.

The EFF may have lost the numbers battle on Monday – but it certainly did not lose the propaganda war.

Although many places around the country continued with life as normal – especially in the Cape – many businesses closed and workers stayed at home, some because of the long weekend, others intimidated by the EFF’s reputation for thuggery.

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Yet, the mere fact of the protests generated millions of rands in publicity the EFF could not buy and gave the action legitimacy way beyond what it actually deserved.

This was portrayed by the EFF – and amplified by many in the media – as a protest for “regime change”, thereby likening it to revolutions across the world in the past decade which have removed unpopular governments.

President Cyril Ramaphosa was never in any danger of being deposed by the shutdown – but the government’s deployment of thousands of troops and cops showed it was panicky.

Whether EFF leader Julius Malema was hoping the stayaway would degenerate into open insurrection, as happened in KwaZulu-Natal in 2021, is a point to ponder.

The low numbers in the streets showed the EFF is still a minority and ANC loyalty among people is strong.

But the EFF sent a strong message: ignore us at your peril.

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