GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The future of the EFF

The results of the upcoming elections are extremely hard to predict in terms of how formal power will be distributed across our municipalities and metros.

In a grander sense, the picture is clearer: the ANC is a party in decline, fighting for whatever credibility it can muster. The DA is trying to recover from an electoral setback and regain momentum while plugging leaks along the way. And the EFF continues to grow off a small base, feeding off ANC alienation and discontent.

Whatever their trajectories, the size of the ANC and the DA means they will inevitably be centrally involved in those significant coalition discussions that emerge post November 1, of which those in key metros will be the most important. The EFF will be there too, on the margins, but it is going to become increasingly hard for that party to play its game of half-informal-half-formal-partner in those coalition arrangements that finally hold sway.

The hard evaluation most people make of any political party over time is how effective it is in handling formal power, as opposed to manipulating it from the outside. It is the test of a political party, and one the EFF has, to date, been too scared to take. At some point the EFF is going to have to make a hard call: either it is a party of government, or not. You cannot exist perpetually as a bit player. 

Here things get very difficult for the EFF. To hold sway in a coalition you need a significant percentage of the vote. Whatever the arrangement, power is almost always distributed in proportion to your electoral performance. And it is unlikely the EFF will outperform the ANC and DA in most places.

The EFF’s historic solution to this problem has been to propose an exchange of power: where it is the minority or a significant force in one municipality, other parties give it power. In return, where those parties require the EFF support elsewhere, it will provide it. And so governments are formed and bartered in this way.

The problem with this, is that it binds other parties to the EFF in a way they cannot control. The DA, for example, already smarting from previous unstable arrangements with the EFF, will not want to say it is responsible for giving the EFF power, if it uses it to destroy or damage a government. In theory this could be avoided by an overarching agreement on principles, but that would negate the point of giving each party the opportunity to govern on its own terms. So, it is something the EFF would be unlikely to agree to.

And, just as in 2016, the EFF would be unlikely to agree to any normal coalition arrangement, on a case-by-case basis, as a minority partner, agreeing to a common set of goals and principles. Here, it would be the EFF bound to the DA or ANC, more on those party’s terms than its own.

In turn, minority partners typically vanish into the ether, unable to properly distinguish themselves. That is probably less of a problem for the EFF, which will make mischief whatever it agrees to, but still, it is another risk the EFF will be all too aware of.

After the last local government elections, the EFF tried to control for this by manufacturing some special circumstance, whereby it was not formally part of any coalition, but through abstaining from voting would effectively give the DA, in particular, power. That, and the ability to be able to informally manipulate — in places such as Johannesburg — the mayor, who was suitably weak and susceptible to the EFF’s guilt-laden racial politics.

The benefit of this is that it could disown policy decisions it disagreed with, and take credit for those which suited it.

Perhaps it will end up forced to go this route again: not enough power to form a government on its terms, but enough power to play an influential and distinctive role in some tortured way. It was wholly destructive, whichever way you look at it. And in Nelson Mandela Bay, where the EFF informally switched, carefree, between the DA and the ANC, hardly conducive to a generating a good reputation as a responsible coalition partner concerned with good governance.

Not that the EFF cared.

But all these games come at a cost. For one, your reputation and influence is incredibly difficult to manage and define. For another, at the end of it all, it is hard for anyone to say with any authority what an EFF government would ever achieve on its own. It’s a question the EFF has no answer to, because it refuses to compromise in any shape or form.

Part of the EFF’s problem is its own rhetoric. The idea that you are “powerful” matters disproportionately in SA politics. It’s why the ANC banks so heavily on huge final rallies. In an attempt to counter its actual size, the EFF talks as if it speaks for everyone (or for all black South Africans, at least). It pours huge resources into generating the perception it is an all-encompassing force on the ground; that it is the silent majority.

And so its inability to win outright power anywhere, or enough power to be the senior and determining partner in a coalition, is a brand problem more than anything. Why can’t this mighty hidden force win at least one municipality? The question is going to become more and more telling. And, sooner or later, the EFF is going to have to answer it. 

It is hard to see what that answer is. Coalition governments can work in an environment where parties are mature, and can compromise in adult fashion. They don’t work in fundamentalist environments, where parties use them as gimmicks, to make self-serving political points. And the EFF is about as fundamentalist and uncompromising as you get, not to mention immature.

Of course, all of this is redundant if the EFF doesn’t care a jot about actual governing, outside of an outright majority. And that is likely to be the case, all things considered. The actual lay of the land, in real time, is an inconvenience for the EFF. In its mind’s eye, it needs to simply navigate the difficult questions asked of it by the distribution of power and potential responsibility, until it can emerge in a decade or so, all powerful, and free of such things as compromise.

Seen in this light, governments are tantalising opportunities: you can augment and speed up your grand plan by putting on a good show in them but to do that, you need to be able to meaningfully influence them. What to do? Julius Malema is well aware of the carrot that dangles in front of him, and he can sense too that the ANC, for one, is at it weakest. If ever there were an opportunity to get a government more on the EFF’s terms than not, it is now.

Frankly, there is no downside to the EFF’s getting control of something. It would be good to see how well its ideological fantasies mesh with real-world constitutional democracy. We would all learn something from that, even if tough on those people in the actual municipality. But whether any political party ever wants to be brave enough to give the EFF that opportunity is another question.

Then again, beggars can’t be choosers, and the ANC’s desperation is almost palpable. The EFF will dangle a different sort of carrot in front of that party, and it will be just as hard for it to resist. Let’s see. Given that the EFF’s ideological worldview is essentially that of the ANC, only on crack cocaine, it might be easier to find a middle ground here.

Until then, you can be sure the EFF will remained trapped between its idea of itself — as an all-powerful voice of “the people” — and reality — a smallish party forced to constantly manufacture the perception it is bigger than it is. So there will be lots of talk about its desire to govern, and little in the way of how it would ever do that on any terms other than entirely its own. And those two things will remain immutable.

On the upside, there is always the possibility of EFF divisiveness and destruction — of coalition relationships and of the service delivery needs of citizens as a result. That would be entirely on brand for the EFF too. It is the easier path, if not the party's default position, and indicative of the one consistent truth, seemingly applicable to the EFF whatever the circumstance: zero responsibility.