Will Malema’s EFF eclipse DA come 2024 elections?

Come 1 November, some political parties will be fighting for survival in municipal councils while others will be consolidating voter support.

Although the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is not known as the best performer in the local sphere, with none currently to point at in its bag, the EFF has the potential to cause an upset in some wards.

Julius Malema’s charge gives it some hope of winning eThekwini and performing well, or even governing, in some municipalities in Limpopo.

I stopped discarding the EFF as a nonstarter a long time ago, if the thought stuck in my mind at all. This is because at present, the EFF is the only growing political party in South Africa while the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) are going down.

The ANC’s downward spiral began during the Zuma years, from 2009, and the bleeding continued until he was ousted in a palace coup of the sort he visited on Thabo Mbeki.

This was not to stop under Cyril Ramaphosa, for the ANC nosedived from 62% in Zuma’s last term, minus one year, to 57% in 2019 when Ramaphosa took office.

Although some – myself included – believed Ramaphosa suffered from an anti-Zuma backlash or nine wasted years, others saw both as samples from the same rotten potato bag.

At the polls on 9 May, 2019, voters wanted to punish the ANC regardless of who was leading it.

The DA, on the one hand, experienced its first loss in national polls – and it found an excuse to get rid of Mmusi Maimane as leader.

The question is, with Maimane no longer there, will the DA reverse its loss, having ditched the black electorate in favour of the white voters?

It goes without saying that the DA changed tune to counter a threat from the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), which performed impressively at the 2019 elections.

I saw a smile of satisfaction from FF+ leader Dr Pieter Groenewald at the Electoral Commission of SA results centre in 2019 every time he looked at the giant results screen.

The party continues to steal DA support among the conservative coloured voters in Western Cape.

Now to the EFF, the third-largest political party in the country. The EFF did badly during last year’s and this year’s series of by-elections, winning neither seats nor a municipality.

However, there is hope that this is about to change. EFF support had been youth between the ages of 18 and 35 but in the past few years, I saw it stabilising in the middle as it affected adults as black voters seek an alternative to the ANC.

The black voters began to seek alternatives when Mbeki was unceremoniously recalled as the republic’s president by Zuma’s national executive committee in 2008.

Congress of the People (Cope) was the only alternative at the time for disgruntled ANC members, hence it swelled its ranks, giving it 30 MPs within five months of its establishment.

But Cope’s infighting forced some supporters to return to the ANC while others became apathetic nonvoters while waiting for the next ANC replica.

To some, the EFF has become that red alternative, complete with ANC policies but in a more radical form.

While the EFF is still far from power, the DA must keep alert as Malema could eclipse the official opposition in the 2024 national election.