2024 Polls: ‘General elections will mark titanic shift’, says EFF

With the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) having celebrated one million card-carrying members this week as South Africa’s third-largest party, it still has work to do as it creeps up on the Democratic Alliance (DA), experts say. And with the DA refusing to release its numbers and the ANC at 661 489 carded members – according to its organisational report in December – people must look to voting numbers recorded by the Electoral Commission of SA for an objective view of the “big three”. Going down the 2019 general election results, the ANC took home 10 026 475 votes, the DA…

With the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) having celebrated one million card-carrying members this week as South Africa’s third-largest party, it still has work to do as it creeps up on the Democratic Alliance (DA), experts say.

And with the DA refusing to release its numbers and the ANC at 661 489 carded members – according to its organisational report in December – people must look to voting numbers recorded by the Electoral Commission of SA for an objective view of the “big three”.

Going down the 2019 general election results, the ANC took home 10 026 475 votes, the DA 3 622 531 and the EFF 1 882 480.

READ MORE: ‘Support communities, get young people ready’: EFF’s roadmap to 2024 elections

‘Titanic shift’

Following its 18th central command team meeting, the EFF noted it was more than confident the 2024 general elections would mark a “titanic shift” in the political landscape of South Africa.

“This comes after the credible realisation that the EFF has grown tremendously over the past 10 years and has now reached a stage where we are ready to govern,” the statement read.

EFF spokesperson Leigh-Ann Mathys said besides the DA voter decline since the inception of the EFF and that it “reached its ceiling”, the EFF had declared 2023 the year of massive political education and voter registration.

Political education for members

She said the one million members would undergo political education which would see them become activists in their communities.

“Part of their duties was to contribute to the registration of five million voters. We are following the same model that we used for the one million membership campaign to register a minimum of five million voters,” she said.

“Having said that, though, the DA is not a threat and has never been a threat to the EFF. So, our strategic growth is not designed to threaten the DA.”

Mathys said the EFF would celebrate it’s 10-year anniversary “of eating the elephant [ANC] bit by bit” on 26 July.

Founded by expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and his allies in 2013, the EFF is a left-wing, pan-Africanist and Marxist-Leninist political party.

Expert weighs in

Political analyst Ntsikelelo Breakfast said although the EFF have doubled their efforts and done quite well, it was not certain the party could overtake the DA in the 2024 general elections.

He said it was still early days. “If you look at their targeted audience, they tend to gravitate to the black communities and target young people in particular, who are in the margins of the economy.”

Breakfast said the EFF needed to broaden the scope of their constituency if they wanted to overtake the DA. “But anything can happen because the DA has been losing ground and did not perform the way they should have at general elections,” he said.

Numbers not enough to overtake DA

University of the Free State political analyst and associate professor of sociology Sethulego Matebesi said EFF numbers were increasing, but they were not yet enough to overtake the DA, let alone get an outright majority in the 2024 elections. “They should consolidate support and devise strategies how to translate the many followers into people who will vote for it,” he said.

The DA said EFF’s promises of growth were not new. DA spokesperson Cilliers Brink said the EFF had not been able to grow “beyond a national ceiling of about 10%”.

He said the fragmentation of the opposition vote was a threat to the DA and the prospect of a strong alternative. “A divided opposition is no opposition, as we saw in Joburg. Smaller parties are more than willing to sell out their voters to the ANC. But we don’t see the EFF growing significantly in urban areas.”

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