9 years later: The Cape Colony remains an unknown terrain, a no-go zone for the mighty EFF.
With the proper cadre the arrest of the stunted growth of the organisational platform of the EFF in the Western Cape, will not be a perilous political expedition, even if it takes place 9 years post the stillbirth in this specific political sphere. A political strategy is required to dismantle the no-fly zones of the Cape Colony civic sphere.
On the 30th of July 2022 the EFF will celebrate its 9th Anniversary as a decolonial socialist political party founded in the post-apartheid postcolony known as South Africa. It is with great honour that we observe the historical advance of a pan-African leftist progressive mass movement throughout the continent and the diaspora. As a founding member of EFF UWC Branch 2014 I was fortunate to attend the WC’s 1st Anniversary programme in Stellenbosch where the masses were addressed by Maggie, Andile, Bernard and Commissar Paulsen.
Comrades as we sharpen our spears in the battle of ideas we shall remain disciplined and loyal to the correct line as outlined by our ideological framework of Marx-Lenin-Fanon while guided by Mao thought on criticism and self-criticism. Politically we can disagree but the contradiction should not undermine our comradeship as pan-African socialist allies and members of the same organisation. EFF cannot afford to lose supporters, members or leaders yet opportunists must be purged for the future to prevail.
Currently the political vacuum in the Colony is preyed on by opportunistic and ethno-nationalist political formations who wish to capitalise, on the collapsing DA and ANC, as the consistent decline in support and resignations of their officials is evident on the political landscape of our nation. The coloured question needs to be addressed by the rank-and-file of the organisation in order to arrest the stunted growth of EFF Western Cape. On the 6th of July 2022 EFF received 14 votes (0,56%) after fielding fighter Desmond Pula in a ward that is culturally dominated by coloured voters. Now coloureds are, especially in hinterland-rural areas outside of Cape Town metropolitan jurisdiction, ancestrally African and thereby they would be politically Black but when this is articulated to the other officially recognized ethnic-language micro-nations we the culturally coloureds are accused of using identity politics to leverage positions and roles. There is an element of fabrication and naïve backward primitive traditional homeland intellectual politics when stating that coloureds do not want to join EFF, well until popular representation is respected and discussed internally the EFF in the Colony will never be able to publicly appeal to the popular vote in the political and civic sphere of the Cape Colony. Let me make the simple example: Fielding an ethnically Bapedi candidate in a predominantly AmaXhosa ward-community will not yield the same results as fielding a isiXhosa language user of that grassroots area. As EFF members we should learn from the mistakes the ANC has made with purges post 1994 in the Colony which is said to have been ethnically driven when engaging of memoirs of culturally coloureds that were ant-apartheid combatants and liberation soldiers. Note that the ideologically opportunistic PA received 141 votes (5.6%) in the same by-election while the ANC received 795 votes and the DA won the ward with 1568 votes. When looking at names and ethnicity of all fielded candidates it is only the EFF that opted not to field a culturally coloured candidate, and these are choices that must be interrogated and reflected on in CCT War council sitting agendas or the arrest of the stunted growth will continue to be long shot and might end up being a revolution that never comes to the WC in the form of a capable organisation.
The founding foundations of EFF WC as plotted by Gcobani Ndzongana, founder of the Small town leftist party LAND in Hermanus, were never stable as he identified average leaders with middle-class consciousness that lacked the fire, talent and ability to be great leaders, and then in 2018 EFF assembly lobbyists fetched a charisma lacking 2016 Agang candidate, to be the engine of the entire province Honourable Arnolds, the incumbent provincial secretary of EFF who I observed in a 2014 George Herald article as an AgangSA leader, these are some of the reasons why EFF is finding it difficult to cope as a party that should be growing in the WC, like EFF grows exponentially in other provinces with every election. If the interim and following official structures were established with trusted and trained black conscious pan-African radical left revolutionaries with a track-record of impactful credentials the EFF was going to be above 10% in the WC come the 2024 national elections. Starting a movement with opportunistic and reactionary elements in the ranks is asking for a stillbirth, I say a stillbirth as the current results are meager results of EFF’s reach into national consciousness of WC voters, and the minimal half-hearted underfunded mobilisation programmes during election seasons.
Many of the founding interim leaders left the EFF for unscrupulous reasons while others have been launched to the highest-ranks of the EFF CCT. It becomes unfair to other provinces that outperform WC extensively, to have CCT members and members of parliament of equal proportion to WC deployment to the structure and lists of national public representatives.
The fact that parties like GOOD, CCC and PA are finding legitimate appeal in the coloured voting bloc is because the bloc finds popular representation of the leadership officials of the party who in-turn speaks in the same pro-poor narrative as the masses they seek to serve or use. The EFF WC must stop producing coloured representation as tokens or satellites but never as vibrant leaders.
In 2021 EFF received 3.42% electoral support in the WC, EFF grew with 1 seat since the 2016 LGE. In the same year EFF received 8.64% support in KZN allowing the organization to grow with 90 council seats. The CCT disbanded Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal leadership in 2016 and Limpopo leadership was disbanded in 2022, disbandment took place due to declining growth and lower voter turnout in support of EFF. Currently the WC is forging ahead to a Provincial Peoples Assembly in 2022 by any means necessary. Will the CCT disband the incoming PCT post-2024 election, after 10 years in existence as a party, if the vote support remains stunted with insignificant revolutionary gains in the political representation spheres of the WC at councils and legislature. 8 Years of, having national party officials from WC, rallies in the WC, Protest marches in the WC and SRC taking campuses in the WC has not arrested the stunted growth of EFF WC.
The EFF will not be an ANClite type organization in WC that will continue to be overshadowed by ANC electoral support in the 2026 elections and beyond. There is an urgent need to bring the DA under 50% in the WC and thereby a powerbrokers will have to negotiate a coalition government at provincial and municipal levels. EFF ground forces, ideologues, affiliated independent analysts and visionaries will be absolved by history. It will be embarrassing for a President of an EFF government to preside over a country where EFF will continue to struggle to be a ruling or even influential party in WC legislature similar to the outgoing national ANC government. EFF will prevail when it exhibits itself as an anti-thesis to the political culture of patronage, anti-intellectualism and branch gatekeeping, as that method of manipulating processes contributes to the illegitimacy, moral crisis and cultural malaise of an organisation led by a corrupted politically expedient leadership who are seemingly striving to be unprincipled public leaders of society.
Society is approaching the end of 2022, EFF year of the branch to which strict guidelines must be observed towards BGA’s for delegate selection processes towards the PPA. The branch cannot be a means to an end in itself, I am perplexed that after 8 years branches are still being built and relaunched annually for conferences, instead of having annual assemblies with the loyal members and supporters of the branch, instead of having consistent activities taking place beyond the normal canvassing for members and asking communities to vote, currently our approach as EFF to branch politics informs and is informed by ANC culture. Currently EFF is replicating ANC branch politics of political patronage but without the ANC resources, it is a dangerous path for the organisation to get sucked into the politics of assemblies and quorums while no programmes take place at grassroots yet membership is inflated while no culture of grassroots community activism is developed. Historically in our liberation struggle the branch was a revolutionary cell with the purpose of training a cadre of party functionaries that implement programmes, organize the community, raise the level of political awareness through ideology school and working towards the goals of the organization. It is through programmes that branch membership should expand and there is no need for a set number of members before the branch can undertake community activism to escalate the struggle.
With strategic intervention the EFF WC Leadership will be able to arrest the stunted growth. As ground forces we trust that our insights will not be taken for granted nor considered a theatric. Our wish is for the EFF to not remain a small irritation in the WC.
Our struggle advances! Organise!
