OPINION| By Ongama Mtimka
As the results from the 2024 National General Elections hit the 99.07% mark on Saturday 1 June 2024, Julius Malema waltzed into the Results Operation Centre and basically did what chess players would call the opening move.
It was like a beehive with all the national and international media wanting to get in on the action.
He has confirmed that the EFF does not only intend to work with the ANC but in fact wants to work with the ANC. He argues that they have done their strategic evaluation and are keen to go into a coalition with the ANC because it will never grow, along with everything else they mentioned.
In the 2024 elections, in essence, the Economic Freedom Fighters find themselves in the realm of the ambiguous in terms of their growth prospects in this election. The party’s results were hovering at 8,67% when 18.19% of the votes were counted by midday on Thursday.
They saw consistent growth in successive elections since coming into the political fray of opposition politics.
However, throughout the last year, the party has faced conflicting messages between opinion polls and political pundits. On one level, some polls showed the party would grow, albeit marginally. And on the other many polls predicted a decline for the party.
There has been a consensus among many pundits that the growth prospects for the party were solid, even if some were more bearish about the prospects of the party.
The bottom line is this. The party finds itself in a liminal place. It is finding itself in the same space that I argued the DA was in ahead of the 2019 elections.
A liminal place is that state of uncertainty where it is not clear what an organisation is morphing into. It’s that place where the strategic posture for an organisation becomes survival, not even defensive.
Defensive strategies are those that can be overcome by an organisation’s strength. But survival strategies attack the weaknesses of an organisation, not its area of strength.
Likewise, the biggest attack of the MK party, mainly against the ANC, has been where the EFF has also been among the weakest, if fledgling, KwaZulu Natal. The Zuma’s would certainly see the EFF as the collateral damage of what otherwise is a political onslaught targeted at their main nemesis, the ANC of Ramaphosa.
The place the EFF finds itself in is the kind of place that requires more patience and calmness than haste and agitation and Julius Malema has now broken the ice by making the move.
Let us watch and see.
Dr Ongama Mtimka is a political analyst based at Nelson Mandela University, the executive chairperson of the South African Political Risk Institute, and a resident analyst for the SABC during the 2024 National General Elections. He writes in his personal capacity.
