A series of public statements by EFF leader Julius Malema has provided perhaps the most detailed explanation of how his party and the ANC are planning to govern metros between them, and how they will continue to use mayors from minority parties. While this may allow certain parties to have much power and little responsibility, there are also strong indications that it will not result in better service delivery.
This strategy may also turn out to be dangerous, not just for voters but for the parties themselves, as they could end up giving executive power to people over whom they have limited or no control. In the long term, this could be a political recipe for disaster.
On Sunday, while speaking in the Free State, Malema told EFF members that he believed the party would win five positions on the mayoral committee in Ekurhuleni. He said this would go with the two positions it has in Joburg.
He said they would follow the strategy already applied in Joburg, where the EFF and the ANC both backed a member of a minority party for the position of mayor.
As reported by News24, Malema said: “Here, in the Free State, we are negotiating with the Metsimaholo Local Municipality because there we can also go in, but we refuse to go in under the ANC, so we came up with a new strategy now that we would rather have a small-party mayor because we can’t have each other and serve under each other.”
Meanwhile, on Monday morning the leader of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC, Siboniso Duma, told SAfm: “We have started a process at the level of the leadership of the EFF” in eThekwini.
This followed a no-confidence vote in eThekwini on Friday where the ANC’s mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda, survived with the support of the EFF.
All of this now suggests that the two parties are coming closer together in various provinces across the country.
But many questions remain.
For example, while Malema was spelling out this plan, he also confirmed that the EFF would try to disrupt ANC leader President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address on Thursday evening.
This again underscores the tension around this dynamic, around how the EFF can be trying to overthrow the state while working with the ruling party, and how the ANC can even think of working with a party wanting to remove its leader.
There are many other curiosities around this.
For example, if the EFF does ...