EFF WOULD BE PERPLEXED BY POWER Eusebius McKaiser (This is the full version of my latest column as promised) An awesome bunch of booklovers hosted me the other night at the Troyeville Hotel here in Joburg to discuss my most recent book. Just when I thought I was about to get a break from the sharp wit of my discussant and fellow writer Antony Altbeker, the audience made me work equally hard. Among countless column- worthy questions, the Guardians David Smith asked me, having followed my analysis of the Democratic Alliance closely over the last few years Have you thought of writing a book called Could I Vote EFF? Obviously Ive heard the frivolous version of this question before- someone trying to score a quick but awfully cheap laugh off my book title - Could I Vote DA? - by suggesting books of other parties too. But David was not trying to score a cheap one. Rather, like many foreign journalists, David takes EFF and Julius Malema more seriously than most local journalists do. Sure, we give EFF plenty of local media exposure. But thats not the same thing as taking the party seriously, ascribing to it a clear, coherent, attractive, feasible and sustainable political ideology moulded, say, in some of the left wing political success stories in South America in recent political history. We simply lampoon Malema, still. In his characteristically gentle way, David Smith was asking me to set aside my DA dilemma and think of the EFF as a live political option. Could I? Could I Vote EFF? I suspect Ive actually made up my mind on the question but when posed it that night, I hit the pause button and treated it with some seriousness. Im not sure if the beer my fabulous publisher was feeding me slowed me down, if Davids English accent induced in me a need to fake a grammatical pause or whether I genuinely in that moment accepted EFF worthy of some consideration. But the question was, for a little while, hard to answer. The obvious problem with EFF struck me though. Are they interested in governing? Im not convinced they are. They are anarchists who simply enjoy critiquing life in post-democratic South Africa as horrible for black people and filled with institutions that are inherently anti-black and illegitimate to the core. Thats the tenor of their criticism of the current government and of their analysis of life in our country in 2014. Even the DA is less bleak about how far weve come over the past twenty years. I would pay serious money to be a fly in the EFF wall the night the IEC announces the elections results. They will be sweating when the numbers come in. Imagine their worst nightmare come true and they get up to 15% of the national vote. Just imagine. It will be a nightmare because it will present the anarchists with a dilemma: Legitimate this anti-black institution called the South African state by joining and participating in it or saying to the IEC, Askies we didnt mean to take part in the elections! We wanna continue throwing stompies from the side! Can you imagine Andile Mngxitama or Julius Malema seriously being interested in the details of committee work in parliament or being MECs of some boring portfolio that requires technocratic oversight and strategic leadership? That would require some sacrificing of time at the very least: Less time for trite revolutionary posturing and forced to enter the very state youve been dissing as anti-black to the core. And theres an identity tension: How do you justify participating in structures you deem not just instrumentally abused but morally and politically rotten? For EFF politicians, joining the state must be as treacherous as black politicians joining the apartheid government. In that sense other parties - AgangSA, DA, UDM, Cope, etc., - have less trouble. They think the ANC is doing a bad job. But they dont think the very heart of post-democratic South Africa, and her foundational institutions, including the state apparatus and the different tiers of government, lack legitimacy. This doesnt mean EFF cant or wont do well. But EFFs electoral successes, whatever they will be, will likely be, in part, because the ANC is too arrogant to respond to the impact of the negative Zuma brand on the partys fortunes, in part because the DA may grow less aggressively than it should but for avoidable strategic errors, and in part because both the DA and the ANC fail to take EFF seriously enough. But soon after the elections EFF will not know what to do with itself in the absence of elections mania. The real essay to be written - a book would be over the top - wont be Could I Vote EFF? but Why EFF was doomed and the answer will be rooted in its founding anarchism and disinterest in governance. For now, EFF can chill. But it should not be fooled by the temporary rewards of gatvol ANC loyalists. Voters will want more. Just ask Cope. - Mckaiser is author of the best-selling book Could I Vote DA? A Voters Dilemma
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 11:43:50 +0000
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