The EFF’s quiet message to the DA not to mess with them

Last week at this same time, it seemed likely we were heading for trouble in the coalition metros of Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg.

It seems that trouble has now arrived.

Nelson Mandela Bay’s deputy mayor had just been ousted in a motion of no confidence brought by the Patriotic Alliance’s (PA’s) sole councillor, Marlon Daniels, and which was supported by the DA, Cope and the ACDP.

The EFF chose to support the UDM despite serious allegations against Bobani of corruption and that he was voting with the ANC.

It would seem the EFF either agreed with UDM leader Bantu Holomisa that Bobani was the innocent victim of a smear campaign – and that Mayor Athol Trollip was in the wrong during their months of war – or they were merely perturbed the DA was “bullying” its coalition partners.

Perhaps what annoyed them most, though, was that Daniels was offered a deal by the DA in return for his motion and his vote against Bobani. He was announced earlier this week as the new MMC for public health, a position left vacant by Bobani, who had been sacked in May.

The PA, which is already in coalition with the ANC in Ekurhuleni, is now in coalition with the DA in Nelson Mandela Bay.

The EFF hates Gayton McKenzie’s PA, for reasons that should be obvious enough to anyone who was following the insults between McKenzie and Malema in 2014. For Malema to have to witness the fact that the DA did a deal with McKenzie must be very hard to accept. I’ve said before that McKenzie probably did everything he’s done in Nelson Mandela Bay primarily to sow discord between the EFF and the DA.

Curiously, it also now means the PA has exactly one more MMC position in local government than the EFF, because Malema famously (and, for some, quite inexplicably) handed all his party’s votes to the DA in Pretoria and Joburg while apparently asking for nothing in return except the priceless pleasure of the horrified look of disbelief on the ANC’s faces.

I remember how there were early – ultimately inaccurate – reports that the DA and EFF were doing a deal that would have seen Floyd Shivambu of the EFF becoming the mayor of Johannesburg while the DA would then have been able to install Solly Msimanga in Pretoria. These two cities control staggering budgets and exert great influence over the lives of millions, and yet the EFF called a press conference in a dusty field next to the Alexandra township to declare they were cool with just handing all the spoils of power and the attendant billions to the DA.

Malema said they wouldn’t go into coalition with the DA but would give them their votes anyway – to then keep the DA in check as a more constructive form of opposition.

This was unprecedented in South African politics. The only trump card the EFF was left with was the fact that the DA would still require EFF support to get any motions through council. They may now be playing that card.

This week, we may have witnessed the first signs that Malema’s party is having a quiet sulk over what’s happened in Nelson Mandela Bay, where their votes are not nearly as significant.

They failed to show up for an important council meeting on Thursday (yesterday) in Tshwane to vote on the auctioning of Kgosientso “Sputla” Ramokgopa’s former mayoral mansion, the so-called “house of corruption”.

They also weren’t present in Johannesburg’s council on the same day while an important discussion about the city’s finances was being held.

The ANC staged walkouts in both councils that forced adjournments. They are already making jokes about the breakdown of the relationship between the EFF and the DA.

It’s not like the EFF to do anything quietly. These are the loudest people in the history of our political scene. They are wildly active on Twitter and will upload anything and everything that might win them some publicity from a hungry media that simply loves whatever bones the EFF tosses their way.

So if they really are boycotting councils in Tshwane and Joburg, the fact that they’re doing so quietly is significant. Even when Business Day asked them whether they were staging boycotts, the party kept its silence.

It probably means they are sending a discreet message for now to the DA not to take them for granted, as the DA has indeed been doing. These EFF “boycotts” are probably also a timely reminder from Malema to the DA that they should think very carefully about the company they wish to keep in Port Elizabeth.

The silent stay-aways will have been chosen as an option to avoid giving the “worse devil”, Jacob Zuma’s ANC, anything to cheer about prematurely.

In this game of “chicken” being played right now between the DA and the EFF, no one is revving their engines and it’s hard to hear anything going on. But if they start hurtling towards each other noisily and do collide, the bang and its echoes will probably be heard for years to come.

Charles Cilliers, Citizen.co.za digital editor