Malema still hoping for 51% of the vote

In an interview with Rwandan media on the sidelines of the fifth Pan-African Parliament in Kigali, Rwanda, EFF leader Julius Malema again expressed confidence on Wednesday about his party’s prospects in next year’s general election.

He said the EFF still hoped to unseat the ANC, either through winning an outright majority, or through a coalition if the ANC got below 50%.

Malema answered that his hope was, of course, that the EFF would get more than 51% of the vote.

“You don’t go into a boxing match with a hope to lose. You go in with an intention to win.”

In a recent poll, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) predicted the EFF might be able to more than double its share of the vote since their first participation in elections in 2014. That would put them at around 13%, if the IRR’s sample of 1,000 voters is anything to go by.

They suggested the ANC could drop by as much as 10%, with growth among black voters also likely for the official opposition, the DA.

When asked by a Rwandan journalist to clarify his position on the legacy of late former president Nelson Mandela, Malema said the country’s first black president was “a hero to me”.

“Mandela is one of the people who liberated us.

However, Malema made it clear that Mandela had not achieved everything and that the EFF considered themselves part of carrying the liberation cause further.

“At times we are extremely critical of him because we sometimes think he conceded too much, particularly when it comes to the economy and the land question. But he had to do what he had to do, and we must accept that he has handed the baton on to us and we must continue the fight.”

Malema clarified that Mandela and others in the ANC who had negotiated South Africa’s democracy had failed to agree on timelines about land reform, even though the land “was the core of the struggle”.

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