A MAJOR player on South Africa’s political landscape for more than a decade, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has been shaken to the core following the defection of its deputy leader Floyd Shivambu to former President Jacob Zuma’s fledgling party – uMhkonto weSizwe (MK), or Spear of the Nation.
Mr Shivambu was seen as the EFF’s ideological guru, while party leader Julius Malema assumed the mantle of commander-in-chief – or “screamer-in-chief”, as his critics dubbed him – with his fiery rhetoric demanding the nationalisation of white-owned land and mines, and the “decolonisation” of education.
The duo seemed to be a winning team, with the EFF gaining the support of South Africa’s burgeoning youth population frustrated with the slow pace of political and economic reforms since the end of the racist system of apartheid in 1994.
But the EFF suffered a major setback in the May general election when, instead of achieving its goal of rising from the country’s third biggest party to second, it dropped to fourth.
MK proved to be its political nemesis – just as it was for the governing African National Congress (ANC) – by gaining votes from both parties to snatch third place in the first election it contested.
“MK cannibalised the ANC and took votes from the EFF. It changed the course of South African politics, making the ANC lose its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994,” William Gumede, an academic with Wits University’s School of Governance in Johannesburg, told the BBC.
Mr Shivambu read the political tea leaves and defected to the MK last week, causing the biggest rupture in the EFF since its launch 11 years ago.
For Mr Malema, it was a personal blow because the two, as young men oozing with political energy, had jointly launched the EFF after the ANC – ironically then led by Mr Zuma – expelled them.
They had challenged the authority of a president who was steeped in traditional values of respect for elders, and were kicked out after accusations of being divisive and bringing the party into disrepute.
“The EFF took with it almost the entire youth wing of the ANC, and also came to dominate student politics at campuses across South Africa, such was the party’s appeal amongst young people,” said Paddy Harper, a journalist with South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper.
“Malema had the charisma to get support, and Shivambu the brains to give it ideological direction,” he told the BBC.
