Johannesburg - The year 2014 saw the expected return of the African National Congress in South Africa’s fifth democratic elections.
But now the country now has two potentially game-changing political movements which both have their genesis in disgruntlement within the governing party’s leadership. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the United Front (UF) both held “people’s assemblies” last weekend, but have more than that in common. Both propose a radical transformation to the economic policies which have dominated within the ANC and opposition parties, including the DA.
The EFF was formed in Soweto on July 26 last year.
This past week it elected its first leadership: Julius Malema (president), Floyd Shivambu (deputy president), Godrich Gardee (secretary-general), Hlengiwe Hlophe-Maxon (deputy secretary-general), Dali Mpofu (chairman) and Magdalene Moonsamy (treasurer).
Moonsamy, Shivambu and Malema are former leaders of the ANC Youth League and among the group which popularised the slogan of “economic freedom in our lifetime” while there.
Gardee, a former exile and youth activist, was the EFF’s elections co-ordinator.
Hlophe-Maxon is an MP and she serves as whip in the EFF caucus.
Mpofu stood as the EFF’s candidate for premier in Gauteng where it garnered 10.30 percent of the votes (451 318 votes) and eight seats in the provincial legislature.
In contrast to several recent political start-ups, the EFF has been able to set itself apart from the ANC with clear policy proposals. Its founding manifesto proposed:
* Expropriation of land without compensation.
* Nationalisation of mines, banks and other strategic sectors, without compensation.
* Building state capacity which will lead to the abolition of tenders.
* Free quality education, healthcare, houses and sanitation.
* Protected industrial development to create millions of sustainable jobs, including the introduction of minimum wages in order to close the wage gap between rich and poor, close the apartheid wage gap and promote rapid career paths for Africans in the workplace.
In line with its mission of attaining State power, the EFF will contest the 2016 local government polls on the path toward its ambition to “take over” in 2019.
“Every municipality, every ward and every community shall be contested with credible candidates approved through robust consultations with the people,” it states in a statement following its first national congress in Mangaung this week.
“All outstanding EFF branches in all wards of South Africa must be launched, and EFF must exist everywhere: in farms, workplaces, campuses, villages and all informal settlements.”
According to the same congress statement, the EFF has vowed to fight for the “criminalisation of base erosion and profit shifting” (a technical term referring to the negative effect of multinational companies’ tax avoidance strategies which it says are “robbing South Africa of massive potential wealth”).
More immediately, the EFF plans to lead “radical and militant protests” to mines in order to demand that mining companies provide basic services in surrounding communities.
The EFF will also “openly associate” with and lead programmes that allocate land to landless people.
“We will never stand by and watch when our people are congested in informal settlements and nearby land is unoccupied, owned by those who stole it,” they state.
“We will encourage and provide support to communities that seek to engage in small scale agriculture, and other forms of co-operatives in order to alleviate the extreme levels of poverty that define our people.”
Concluding its assembly on Tuesday, the Day of Reconciliation, the EFF had this parting shot:
“Reconciliation is only possible with uncompromising attainment of the seven cardinal pillars as expressed in the EFF Founding Manifesto. South Africa shall only be a just society under the socialist vision of Peoples Power for Economic Freedom.”
In short, the EFF has identified and seized on the ANC’s inability to adequately respond to the frustration’s of the disenfranchised, unemployed and landless citizens of this country on a populist platform which has appealed to at least one million voters already.
The party espouses the aspirations and frustrations of the millions of South Africans who have not been able to access and benefit from the riches and opportunities which some have accessed post-1994.
The ANC Youth League, which failed to hold an elective conference earlier this month despite an attempted-resuscitation process that began months before the formation of the EFF, could be expected to counter these machinations.
However, the ANC will also have to show that it is listening to these citizens – many of whom would have grown up or at one time placed their bets on the party of liberation.
But the yet-to-be-formed United Front, an initiative by South Africa’s largest trade union, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), will surely also monitor the rapid rise and levels of political and organisational maturity of the EFF, because it too wants the support of the very same constituency that resides on the fringes of society and will increasingly question the narrative that all is well post-1994 – what the ANC called during its 2014 election campaign, ‘Its good story to tell’.
The Numsa watershed special national congress held in December last year resolved to form a United Front aimed at marrying shop floor issues with working class and community-based struggles.
It is a broad coalition bringing together civil society and trade unions.
The UF was due to be launched this month, but it has deferred this to April, presumably because of its lack of readiness.
Last weekend it elected a working committee to prepare for next year’s launch and planned activites. It includes the following:
Dinga Sikwebu – Numsa’s national co-ordinator for the UF.
Ronnie Kasirls – former Intelligence Minister and former member of the SACP central committee.
Kasrils formed the “Sidikiwe! Vukani! Vote No!” campaign which attempted to encourage former and current ANC supporters to spoil their ballots or vote for another political party to prevent the ANC from getting a two-thirds majority during this year’s general elections.
While the ANC did not get a two-thirds majority, the number of spoiled ballots was negligible.
Zackie Achmat – former leader of the Treatment Action Campaign
Bandile Mdlalose – former general secretary of shack-dwellers association, Abahlali base Mjondolo
Mazibuko Jara – prominent former leader of the SACP, now part of the Democratic Left Front
The United Front will focus on several campaigns in the next four months. They are:
* A focus on macro-economic policy and sectoral demands.
n Sanitation
* A stop to farm evictions
* The youth wage subsidy law and the national minimum wage.
n Justice for Marikana workers.
* Planning “The South Africa We Want” campaign.
It has discussed the following long-term campaigns:
* Jobs for all and a living wage
* Food prices
* Hunger
* Equal and free education
* Safety and security
* Corruption
* Police brutality.
The UF is also considering whether it should participate in the 2019 national elections, whether to endorse independent candidates or political parties that may advance its goals.
It is however grappling with what the meaning of socialism is, and whether its vision, strategic mission and aims should include the goal of socialism.
Sunday Independent