The EFF’s demand that MP Naledi Chirwa issue a public apology and purchase two party-branded gazebos for failing to make an appearance in parliament without informing the correct authority has disturbing echoes of the public humiliation of Chinese intellectuals under Mao’s regime.
Her supposed transgression? Informing the organisation instead of the party’s chief whip that she needed to tend to her sick infant, and so was unable to attend finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech.
It is entirely within reason to crack the whip when MPs shirk their duties, but publicly shaming a working mother indicates the EFF leadership is more intent on exerting an iron grip on its public representatives than looking out for the interests of women.
It also raises the spectre of fascist dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler, who were explicitly hostile to the emancipation of women and sought to relegate them to hearth and home.
The greatest trick the devil has ever pulled is to allow fascists to persuade people that they are the real progressives, but in its actions the EFF repeatedly reveals itself for what it is. It’s difficult to have too much sympathy for Chirwa as she knows the nature of the EFF. But voters should take note of what the EFF does, not what it promises in its election manifesto when it comes to the lives of women and children.
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