Johannesburg - On February 26, 1999, more than 700 men and women gathered in Hillside, Harare, to map a way forward for the future of Zimbabwe. They divided themselves into groups which discussed the challenges of the time, during a “convention” that was meant to be a consultation about what should be done about the growing unhappiness over Zanu-PF’s rule.
They were mostly from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and other civil society organisations.
Seven months down the line, they formed a political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, the former secretary-general of the ZCTU.
In the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential elections, Zanu-PF, for the first time, lost its majority in parliament to the MDC, after Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the first round of the elections.
However, Tsvangirai was forced into a power-sharing deal with Mugabe following his failure to win an outright majority.
Tsvangirai was hoping to follow in the footsteps of his counterpart in Zambia, the late Frederick Chiluba. Chiluba, also a former trade union leader, managed to topple Kenneth Kaunda from the presidency, ending the rule by a liberation movement in that country.
A lot has happened to the MDC since then, notably infighting that has caused a breakaway, Tsvangirai’s personal scandals and Mugabe’s repressive action against the party.
In August, the party lost the elections to Mugabe. And as expected, Tsvangirai disputed the results, saying they were cooked.
Although now limping from that election defeat, this has not changed the fact that the MDC was the biggest threat to Mugabe’s hold on power.
In South Africa, as in Harare, thousands of men and women gathered at the Sandton Convention Centre to reflect on the future of the country in November 2008. This was after former president Thabo Mbeki had been recalled by the ANC.
The convention in Sandton, as happened at the MDC’s one in Harare, resolved that a political party had to be formed to challenge the ANC, which had, they argued, lost direction and was a threat to the country’s constitution.
In December 2009, the Congress of the People was born. And, in the 1999 general elections, the party received more than 1.3 million votes, a 7.42 percent share of the vote.
As in the MDC, infighting ravaged the party, as it spent most of its time in courts trying to resolve a leadership dispute between its founding leaders, Mosioua Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa.
This week, the Johannesburg High Court ruled that Lekota was the legitimate leader of the organisation.
Although a shadow of its former self, Cope was the biggest threat to the ANC’s rule.
Nowadays, while the ANC was waiting for Cosatu boss Zwelinzima Vavi to pull a Chiluba or a Tsvangirai on them, forming a workers’ party, it was Julius Malema who organised a convention for a formation of a new political party.
In July, Malema gathered together hundreds of people in Soweto, where it was decided that, as expected, the Economic Freedom Fighters should contest elections.
“All delegates to the national assembly had a definite and unequivocal mandate from millions of South Africans that Economic Freedom Fighters should be an economic emancipation movement, which should be mass based…” read its declaration.
Last week, Malema officially launched the party in Nkaneng informal settlement, Marikana, the scene of of South Africa’s biggest massacre post-apartheid.
At the launch last week, attended by thousands of young South Africans, Malema proclaimed that the EFF would continue the struggle that the ANC had betrayed.
In vintage Malema style, he urged his supporters to fight for expropriation of land from white owners without compensation and nationalisation of mines.
“This is your land. You do not have to pay for the land. It has been already paid by the sweat of your fathers. You are not ashamed of taking our land. And we are not going to beg for our land,” said Malema.
His message to whites: “Those who are not prepared to share, worry about yourselves. Those who are prepared to share, we will kiss each other.”
He added that his party was a government-in-waiting and that it would establish radical trade unions not afraid of confronting bosses.
But will Malema make a dent in the ANC’s majority next year? Will he succeed where Lekota and Tsvangirai failed? And, does the EFF pose a real threat to the ANC?
Political analyst Elvis Masoga says he doesn’t see a future for the party. Masoga, who has written extensively on Malema, said the young leader was likely to return to the ANC after President Jacob Zuma’s departure.
“I think the EFF is led by a person with a divided political loyalty. Since he was expelled, Malema doesn’t attack the integrity of the ANC, but the personal character of Jacob Zuma,” he said.
“I think Malema is killing time. The formation of the EFF gives him enough time to prepare himself to return to a new ANC without Zuma. He is trying to prove a point to Zuma,” he added, noting that the EFF might get more votes than Cope and other recent ANC breakaway like the United Democratic Movement, led by Bantu Holomisa.
“It is not easy to quantify the support the EFF commands in the country. There seem to be members of the ANC Youth League who are members of EFF. You find that some are wearing ANC Youth League T-shirts during the day and EFF at night.
“It (the EFF) may perform better than the upstarts formed recently,” he added.
But for ANC veteran Pallo Jordan, the EFF may have the effect of realigning politics in South Africa.
“The EFF poses an interesting dilemma, especially for those of the ANC critics who hate it for destroying white minority’s monopoly on political power. The EFF speaks about seizure of the economic assets, especially land now owned by whites, without compensation. If, as it seems likely, the EFF wins a seat in Parliament, South Africans can look forward to an interesting five years,” he said in a newspaper column this week.
“An ANC facing an effective opposition to its left, might opt for more radical policies, realigning South African politics in directions that few will have anticipated,” he added.
Jordan, an ANC national executive committee member, said Malema’s threat to open unions at the time Cosatu was in turmoil was received as manna from heaven in certain quarters, because of the harmful effects it could have on electoral performance.
The emergence of the upstart Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union appears to have shaken things in the mining sector.
Amcu’s counterpart, the National Union of Mineworkers, an ally of the ANC, has come across as radical in their wages demands in the latest bargaining season.
However, it was doubtful that the critics who regarded themselves as socialists would go to the EFF, Jordan said. Jordan is probably the first senior ANC leader to intimate that the EFF might have an impact on the country’s political landscape.
The ANC has been dismissive of Malema’s chances at the polls.
The party in Gauteng dismissed him as a “joker”.
“We don’t take Julius Malema seriously. He is a joke and he raises issues that ultimately will not materialise. This is just part of electioneering,” its spokesman, Dumisa Ntuli, said this week.
“The SA people are not fools and will not be blinded by a young boy who does not have experience in governing the country. There is no South African who will give power to that young man,” he added.
But the rabblerouser’s lieutenants warned that the ruling party should watch out.
The EFF is targeting Limpopo, Free State, North West, Northern Cape and Mpumalanga – provinces where the ANC is experiencing challenges.
In Gauteng, the party’s headquarters, Luthuli House, is at loggerheads with the provincial leadership of the party. In Limpopo, where Malema comes from, the party is still in tatters, with those sent to fix it fighting with the interim leadership. The party is dedicating some of its energy to a provincial conference while trying to campaign for elections.
Mpho Ramakatsa, EFF’s national co-ordinator, told The Sunday Independent: “The ANC as a government of the day has assisted a lot in mobilising supporters for the EFF by poor governance and corruption. People are tired.”
Ramakatsa, a former Umkhonto we Sizwe cadre, said the EFF was not a one-man party.
“In the Free State, we were already saying that, with or without Malema, we are registering a political party to fight elections. We have joined EFF because there is no political party in South Africa that is prepared to fight for economic freedom,” he said.
It remains to be seen whether Malema will succeed where Lekota and Tsvangirai failed.
The EFF, as was the case with Cope, will have to contend with ANC infiltration and its own internal dynamics beyond the elections, especially among those who will not get the slice of the party’s government cake.
Those whose loyalty is still divided between it and the ANC might be tempted to jump ship should they not hold positions of power beyond elections next year, rendering the party yet another election organisation formed out of anger or loyalty to an individual.
Whether or not Malema is killing time with EFF, it appears as though South Africa is headed for an interesting time in its political discourse should he and his cohorts go to Parliament next year.
Sunday Independent