Juju effectively runs the ANC

The Economic Freedom Fighters, a party formed by Julius Malema along with some of his fellow former ANC Youth League members such as Floyd Shivambu and Magdalene Moonsamy after the fiery leader was expelled from the ANC, is leading the ANC.

Only the ignorant could deny the fact that the strongly socialist-oriented EFF, which adopted radical economic policies, has grabbed the strategic initiative from the ANC. At a time when youth voter apathy is at its highest level since the first democratic election in 1994, the EFF has managed to become the only party with a majority youth membership.

In its policy approach, the EFF prefers illegality – where it would enforce its ideas in a way that opponents see as anarchy. For the past few years, Malema’s party intensified its pressure on the ruling party to act on the land issue by embarking on illegal land invasions countrywide. In some instances, the land grabs were successful, in others the occupiers were met with the full force of the law.

The EFF and the ANC have a lot in common in the way they deal with politics, one of those being to aim for ungovernability as an outcome of their actions, as happened in the ’80s. It can be justifiably concluded that the current EFF approach of forceful land occupation is a question of chickens coming home to roost. The young party is forcing the ANC to taste the bitterness of its own medicine while stealing its constituency, particularly the youth and the landless poor in the process.

Realising that the carpet was being pulled from under its feet by EFF, the ANC has decided to swallow its pride and attempt to lure Malema back to its fold.

ANC elections chair Fikile Mbalula has made it clear that they will cooperate with the opposition parties in the 2019 election campaign. It was clear who he was referring to for soon after that, the EFF and ANC supported each other to pass a motion on the expropriation of land without compensation. Then the overture to lure Malema back was made.

The EFF, at its inception in 2013, was the first party to adopt land expropriation without compensation, leaving the ANC to do it four years later. When the EFF adopted the policy, the ANC was still trying to recover from its willing seller, willing buyer land policy blunder and grappling with its failing land redistribution in general.

It might sound like some conspiracy theory, but the ANC appears to be now riding on the EFF anarchist approach to fast-track the return of land to the black majority. In this case, I am close to agreeing with a colleague that the ANC was using the EFF to correct its failure to deliver on the land question after 24 years of dithering on the issue.

But one thing is sure, the EFF is tactically above the ANC. Whether it is about land expropriation or the removal of a DA mayor somewhere in the Eastern Cape, the EFF is one step ahead in tactics and strategy.

With the ANC in a tight corner heading towards the 2019 elections, with real fear of losing its electoral majority, the EFF will increase the pressure to force more compromises from the ruling party, which would be compelled to enter into some governance pact with the opposition party post-2019.

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