EFF faces the numbers at national assembly: Stagnation threatens revolution

The National People’s Assembly aims to provide a framework to rebuild the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as a party that can win mass support, seize political power and nationalise the economy on behalf of the working class.

However, the “stark reality” is that the EFF’s support in the May elections is 1.18 percentage points lower than the 10.7% it received nationally in 2019. These results show that the EFF is “a stagnant organisation”.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) stated this in a discussion document called Organisational Character and Redesign, one of the policy concerns that will be discussed at the party’s third National People’s Assembly held at Nasrec in Johannesburg from Friday to Sunday.

The party will make policy decisions at the assembly and elect its leadership for the next five years. EFF leader Julius Malema is expected to be elected for his third term.

The void left by Floyd Shivambu when he defected to the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party as deputy president of the EFF will also be filled at the assembly. Several other party leaders, such as Dali Mpofu, have also since defected to the MK party.

The MK party of former President Jacob Zuma dethroned the EFF as the third largest party after the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the May elections. The EFF is currently the fourth-largest party.

“Perhaps a more generous assessment is that we still need 56% more of South Africa’s voters to vote for the EFF to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to effect the changes we proclaim should happen in South Africa,” the document states.

The document goes on to say that despite these challenges, the EFF has hope for growth, but then factionalism, laziness, sectarianism, academicism and conspiracism must be eradicated.

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