EFF supporters’ “killing machi

EFF supporters’ “killing machines” banner stokes public fury

EFF banners that seem to demand the party faithful kill their ideological opponents mark a new low in South African political discourse, but they do not mean the EFF can be discounted as a serious political party with grown-up ambitions. However, to achieve anything before 2014, Julius Malema will need to leave the shrill hate speech behind and propound some realistic policies

EFF supporters’ “killing machi
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The offending banner was disavowed by central EFF leadership as a regional committee’s independent view (Image: @Youngster_Cam on Twitter)

No political party in South Africa is without a few troublesome, but highly visible supporters: those thorns-in-the-side that electoral planners wish would quietly retreat from the spotlight and stop talking to the media and the public. These constituencies and the parties they support are often an awkward, mutually-hostile fit that persists of reasons of electoral strategy and mutual benefit. The DA has its somewhat right-wing whites and King Buleyekhaya, the ANC has its noisy leftists, and the fledgling EFF has supporters who carry signs that say “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate”, as South Africa’s social networks hastened to advertise this week.

It is a commonplace of politics that parties tend to message from the ideological middlepoint of their constitutuencies. Given the uncompromised clarity of the EFF’s current party platform, which sits far to the left of the ruling party, it was always inevitable that the left wing of a far-left party would produce some winning personal rhetoric. The party should not be blamed for the banner or its message, which the EFF denounced quickly and completely. But South African Twitter was not amused. Mail and Guardian Thoughtleader columnist Brad Cibane (@Brad_Cibane) tweeted to Andile Mngxitama, self-described ‘klipgooier Bikoist’: “@Mngxitama Fighter, I would feel much better DMing you this, I saw a banner about revolutionaries being cold-blooded killing machines…?” and described the message as ‘concerning’, reflecting a certain puzzlement within contemporary leftist circles. Mandy de Waal (@mandydewaal) asked whether this banner meant the EFF supported murder. Right-wing whites, for whom Malema is something of a Hitler in the making (although Mamphela Ramphele has concurred), seized on the banner as proof that genocidal talk had become normalised in South Africa.

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Cameron Modisane and a colleague at the Marikana party launch this weekend (Image: @Youngster_Cam on Twitter)

But the banner is an insight into the minds of an individual EFF voter. Whether these views are representative of a subset of the EFF, or the views of a lone zealot, remains to be seen, but the fact is that the banner is only distinguishable from the party’s actual policies in degree and in its advocacy of physical violence. The EFF’s call for ‘revolution’ implies violence, even to the simplest political imagination, but this violence is supposed to be economic and financial: that is, appropriation without compensation of personal and corporate wealth from historically privileged, mostly white, landowners and businesspeople. Julius Malema has never advocated organised violence against whites in any serious way, but then, he doesn’t need to: the prospect, for whites, of losing the majority of their wealth, is the most serious threat that can be made against an entire minority group of South Africans within the current hate speech legislation.

It remains to be seen whether Julius Malema will actually alter the nation’s political landscape in a substantive way. For this to happen, the EFF would not only need to win at least a handful of seats, probably in the North West, but also achieve meaningful change through the Parliamentary process or through local government. These processes are far more demanding than winning an election, because they imply future strategic limits on what Julius Malema may say and do. Until now, the only calculation Malema has needed to make before making hardline demands for the abolition of Southern Africa’s national borders or flaccid incitements to violence have been their likelihood to make waves. The discipline of running a party and the need to avoid the distraction and expense of constant legal battles against hate speech charges will alter Malema’s public persona. The question Malema-watchers have asked is whether his appeal will survive that kind of discipline.

Charismatic, but can Juju run a party?
Charismatic, but can Juju run a party?

So far, Julius Malema’s electoral demands have been as consistent as they have been incompatible with those of any other party of size. One of the key EFF planks is the sore point of land reform, which Malema proposes to fast-track through compulsory expropriation without compensation. Avoiding a Zimbabwe-style revolution in agricultural ownership is one of the few things all major South Africa political parties agree on; to achieve any meaningful collective vision in coalition with other parties, therefore, would have to begin with the EFF abandoning one of their most distinctive policies. The situation is likewise with mining and with BBE: the radicalism of EFF positions will have to be the first victim of parliamentary pragmatism should the EFF actually intend on altering legislation in a meaningful way. Without these extreme positions, the EFF constitution’s “radical, left-wing, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist” credentials may remain just slogans. With the ANC’s left-wing policies increasingly being hollowed out by the global economic climate and the demands of the private sector and overseas investors, it would be a pity if the voice of the far left was reduced to the shrill and ineffective utterances of an amateur (but splendidly-hatted) outfit.

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