I AM still trying to digest the meaning and implications of what Julius Malema may have unleashed in an interview on eNCA this week, when he said, should the ANC vote fall below 50% in the 2019 general election, then "the first offer I’m going to give the ANC is [a] merger…."
He knitted the fingers of both hands together as he continued. "The EFF and the ANC must come together and then we’ll collapse the name ANC and close Luthuli House and go and open up headquarters of this new party in Soweto, where our people are."
That’s quite a statement from someone who has changed the face of South African politics by demonising the ANC under Jacob Zuma, and Malema is no media rookie. He must have known that what he said would be repeated and analysed.
My only conclusion is that he is trying to directly influence what ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said this very week is a "stampede" inside the party for positions as Zuma and his team head into their final year running the party.
Asked who in the ANC he could work with on his "merger", Malema said Kgalema Motlanthe and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
That may sound like whimsical fantasy until you figure that the person not mentioned is ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa.
He was recently pictured hugging Madikizela-Mandela at her birthday party and at the same time, laughing and holding hands with Malema, as the TV cameras were happy to remind us. And Ramaphosa and Motlanthe are old comrades from the National Union of Mineworkers.
Why, though, would Malema be trying to influence internal ANC politics? I can’t think of anyone inside the governing party, and on any side of the succession debate, who would find scrapping the party’s name and moving its headquarters to Soweto attractive, even symbolically.
Surely, he should be out organising and recruiting new members ahead of the 2019 election, promising to crush the ANC and not revive it in some other form?
The merger, I’m afraid, has to be a sign of weakness. Before the August 3 local elections, Malema said he’d be disappointed with anything less than a tripling of the 6.3% the EFF won on its first outing as a party, in the 2014 general election. He didn’t even come close in August, ending up with 8.25% and fewer than 100,000 more votes than the party won in 2014.
Faced with the daunting task of turning that 2016 increase of just 98,908 new voters into something like a million, it looks as though Malema’s head has dropped a little, like a tired sportsman. Popular or not, politics is a slog and not a dash. It’s exhausting and expensive.
Which is not to say there are not people inside the ANC who would want him back. He has matured hugely as a man and as a politician since his expulsion from the ANC in 2012, and is obviously a magnetic leader.
Madikizela-Mandela would want him back, but what clout does she still have? Assuming the two opponents for Zuma’s job as party head are his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and Ramaphosa, she would probably lean towards Ramaphosa.
If Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma’s preferred candidate because as the next head of state, she would be expected to protect him from fraud charges, is to be beaten, it would be important to remember that ANC royalty such as Madikizela-Mandela, the Sisulus and the Mbekis are now the wounded, just as Zuma and his supporters were before Thabo Mbeki was upended by the party conference in 2007.
This time around, the coalition of the wounded would need to tread very carefully. It is not clear that Malema endorsing anyone, however discreetly, would help them. The fact is he has left the ANC, as have Irvin Jim and Zwelinzima Vavi. Inside the ANC, Zuma still reigns supreme, even as his time slips away. It is going to take a huge effort to stop Dlamini-Zuma becoming head of the party.
What, I wonder, does DA leader Mmusi Maimane think as he watches this little dance? Malema and the EFF are propping up DA governments in Johannesburg and Tshwane, yet he talks of merging with the ANC in less than three years, depending on the 2019 outcome. Some partner.
It has been tempting to see a working model of DA-EFF co-operation in some big metros as a rehearsal for 2019. But that was, it seems, too much to expect. Malema has just reminded Maimane that he is on his own.
That is probably a good thing, but it (also probably) means the ANC vote won’t slip below 50%, no matter the disasters Zuma inflicts on the country. Voters have to smell change to move in big numbers. Malema just opened a window — and the scent of change blew away.
• Bruce is editor in chief.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.