EFF’s elephant in the room cannot be wished away

Russian poet Ivan Krylov wrote a fable in which an inquisitive man visits a museum and notices everything but the largest piece: an elephant.

Since 1814, the year in which Krylov penned the fable, many inquisitive minds have ignored elephants in the room, usually with disastrous consequences.

This past weekend, the EFF held its third elective conference at Nasrec and Julius Malema was re-elected president for the third consecutive term.

The elephant in the room was EFF member of parliament and former national spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi.

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Unlike Krylov’s elephant, Ndlozi did get a mention at the conference.

“We are no longer going to answer any questions about Ndlozi. Never. Whenever a journalist asks you that question [about Ndlozi] you must say ask another question. This matter is closed…”

That was Malema putting what he hoped was a full stop behind the disappearance of Ndlozi from the national leadership of the EFF.

The background to this is that prior to the conference, speculation had been rife as to whether Ndlozi would be attending the conference, or even challenging for positions in the top structures.

When it became clear that he was not present at Nasrec, journalists naturally asked about the elephant in the room.

It cannot be ignored that prior to what turned out to be a logistically well-run elective conference the EFF suffered a what can only be described as an exodus of prominent and founding leaders of the organisation to the organisation’s now sworn by Julius Malema himself to be the EFF’s biggest enemy, Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party (MK).

But unlike former deputy president of the party Floyd Shivambu and former national chair of the party Dali Mpofu, Ndlozi did not defect to MK.

He simply disappeared. No formal communication from him or the EFF.

READ MORE: ‘We are done talking about Ndlozi,’ agitated Malema tells reporters at NPA

Only rumours that some branches wanted him to stand for national positions at the conference.

Why does Ndlozi’s disappearance or sidelining from the EFF’s national leadership structures matter?

Because besides Malema’s three-hour assessment of the health of what used to be South Africa’s third-biggest party before the May election, Ndlozi’s treatment by the EFF is a tangible gauge of what the real atmosphere is like in the upper echelons of the EFF.

It is confirmation that the autocratic leadership style that Malema has been accused of is not only a figment of the media’s imagination.

In his closing remarks at the conference, Malema disclosed what the whole country has always known: they are waiting for the government of national unity (GNU) to collapse and step in to rescue the situation by being the new partners when the DA leaves or is shown the door.

But, like Malema and the EFF have treated Ndlozi, there is another elephant in the room that Malema and his commissars are deliberately choosing to ignore.

Zuma’s MK, behind the ANC and the DA, that is South Africa’s third-largest political party in parliament, however unpalatable that might be to Malema or anyone else.

Elephants in the room cannot be wished away.

Ndlozi and the MK are realities which the EFF’s leadership will have to address if they really hope to replace the DA as the ANC’s majority partners in the government of national unity.

Instructing party leaders to ignore Ndlozi and pretend he does not exist when addressing the media will likely breed feelings of dispensability and fear within those very leaders, to the EFF’s detriment.

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