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Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)

South African politician Julius Malema - nicknamed Juju - knows how to make news. He is the head of the Economic Freedom Fighters, South Africa’s youth-driven far-left political party known by their uniforms of red shirts and berets. Malema surprised everyone when his new Economic Freedom Fighters party took nearly 10 percent of the vote in the 2014.

To borrow a Malema-ism, the question of land ownership is the “alpha and omega” of the Economic Freedom Fighters’ philosophy. “Under an EFF government, land will be nationalized and both so-called private and public and residential land, it will all be under the state ownership. And all of us will have to apply for permission to use that land.”

Malema said that the majority of land in South Africa is still owned by white South Africans, a claim that is hard to verify since the nation’s statistics agency is still using data from before the end of apartheid. But there is still an undeniable economic divide since the end of apartheid in 1994. According to a 2014 study by Statistics South Africa, nine out 10 South Africans living in poverty are black.

EFF leader Julius Malema told his supporters 14 November 2016 that they should occupy any white land that they want. “When we leave here, you will see any beautiful piece of land, you like it, occupy it, it belongs to you… It is the land that was taken from us by white people by force through genocide,” he said.

Malema bordered on hate speech by saying that [White people] found peaceful Africans here. They killed them. They slaughtered them like animals. We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now. … White minorities be warned. We will take our land. It doesn’t matter how. It’s coming, unavoidable. The land will be taken by whatever means necessary. He already faced a court battle where he had been brought to book for similar statements in the past. Malema was addressing a crowd after his court case was postponed to 2017. He faced charges of violating the Riotous Assemblies Act, in calling for EFF members to illegally occupy land. The case is based on two charges, the earliest of which was in 2014.

The party has backed its leader, saying that the policy of land occupation, and taking back the land from white owners without compensation is EFF policy. The party said that it is not Malema on trial for his comments – but the entire EFF for it ideology. At a 2014 party conference, about a year after founding the EFF, Julius Malema told his supporters, “We are going to occupy the unoccupied land because we need the land. For us to eat‚ we must have the land. For us to work‚ we must have the land .… If there is unoccupied land‚ we will go and occupy the land with my branch. You must go and do the same in the branch where you come from.”

Zimbabwe's leaders sanctioned such a chaotic and economically ruinous “land reform” program. Robert Mugabe wanted to use his land reform program to eliminate the traces of colonialism by giving farms to black Zimbabweans. 15 years later the country can no longer feed itself.

Only 10 percent of land in South Africa which once was in white hands has been handed over to black farmers. But they lack the finance, training and support to make the farms a going concern. New legislation in South Africa could enable the government to buy white-owned farmland without consent. The aim is to redistribute farms to the landless black population. However, the economic consequence could be catastrophic.

While Malema’s party won only 6.4 percent of the vote in the 2014 general elections (compared to the ANC’s 62.2 percent), it became South Africa’s third-largest political party—a remarkable accomplishment.

Of all of the things Malema has done, perhaps his own words about race have hurt him the most. In 2011, he was convicted of hate speech for singing an apartheid-era song that called for killing of white farmers. Then in 2013, in the heat of his election campaign, he addressed South Africa’s white population, saying, “If you share with the poor there will be no need to build high walls at your home,” referring to the high walls and electrified fences that ring many homes in South African cities. “Those who are not prepared to share, worry about yourselves,” he said. “Those who are prepared to share, we will kiss each other.”

Malema said “All the youth must be radical, because politics and revolution is an activity of the youth. There’s no apology about it. Because when you are young, you are a rough diamond, and you are going through a process of being polished into a proper shining diamond. I’m not there, but my experiences put me at a point where a 55-year-old cannot outmaneuver me. I’m at that stage.”

The messages resonate with some South African blacks, who are increasingly disillusioned by the failure of the ruling African National Congress party to deliver basic services, and by seeing the party of the late Nelson Mandela named in one corruption scandal after another.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is a radical and militant economic emancipation movement that brings together revolutionary, fearless, radical, and militant activists, workers’ movements, nongovernmental organisations, community-based organisations and lobby groups under the umbrella of pursuing the struggle for economic emancipation.

The EFF is a radical, leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement with an internationalist outlook anchored by popular grassroots formations and struggles. The EFF will be the vanguard of community and workers’ struggles and will always be on the side of the people. The EFF will, with determination and consistency, associate with the protest movement in South Africa and will also join in struggles that defy unjust laws.

The EFF takes lessons from the notation that “political power without economic emancipation is meaningless”. The movement is inspired by ideals that promote the practice of organic forms of political leadership, which appreciate that political leadership at whatever level is service, not an opportunity for self-enrichment and self-gratification.

The EFF draws inspiration from the broad Marxist-Leninist tradition and Fanonian schools of thought in their analyses of the state, imperialism, culture and class contradictions in every society. Through organic engagement and a constant relationship with the masses, Economic Freedom Fighters provide clear and cogent alternatives to the current neo-colonial economic system, which in many countries keep the oppressed under colonial domination and subject to imperialist exploitation.

The EFF is a South African movement with a progressive internationalist outlook, which seeks to engage with global progressive movements. EFF believes that the best contribution EFF can make in the international struggle against global imperialism is to ridthe country of imperialist domination. For the South African struggle, the EFF pillars for economic emancipation are the following:

• Expropriation of South Africa’s land without compensation for equal redistribution in use.
• Nationalisation of mines, banks, and other strategic sectors of the economy, without compensation.
• Building state and government capacity, which will lead to the abolishment of tenders.
• Free quality education, healthcare, houses, and sanitation.
• Massive protected industrial development to create millions of sustainable jobs, including the introduction of minimum wages in order to close the wage gap between the rich and the poor, close the apartheid wage gap and promote rapid career paths for Africans in the workplace.
• Massive development of the African economy and advocating for a move from reconciliation to justice in the entire continent.
• Open, accountable, corrupt-free government and society without fear of victimisation by state agencies.

The EFF appreciates the role played by the fathers and mothers of South Africa’s liberation movement. The EFF draws inspiration from the radical, working class interpretation of the Freedom Charter, because, since its adoption in 1955, there have been various meanings given to the Freedom Charter. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter is one which says South Africa indeed belongs to all who live in it, and ownership of South Africa’s economic resources and access to opportunities should reflect that indeed South Africa belongs to all who live in it. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter is that which says the transfer of mineral wealth beneath the soil, monopoly industries and banks means nationalisation of mines, banks and monopoly industries.

The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter also accepts that while the state is in command and in control of the commanding heights of South Africa’s economy, “people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions”, meaning that there will never be wholesale nationalisation and state control of every sector of South Africa’s economy. Nationalisation of strategic sectors and assets will be blended with a strong industrial policy to support social and economic development.

Economic Freedom Fighters will contest political power, because EFF is guided by the firm belief that the people need political power in order to capture the state and then transform the economy for the emancipation of black South Africans, especially Africans. The forms in which the EFF contests political power will, from time to time, be reviewed in the light of prevailing circumstances, but the primary role of mass organisation and activism, as a means to raise the political consciousness of the people, will remain the bedrock of EFF political practice.

Therefore, the EFF will be involved in mass movements and community protests that seek the betterment of people’s lives. The EFF will also associate with movements that demand land through land occupation, aimed at making the message clear thatthe people do need land. The EFF will support all trade unions and workers that stand up in demand of better working conditions and salaries wherever and whenever they do so. The EFF will not be bound by narrow alliance loyalties that compromise the interests of workers just because they are in a different trade union. Pursuit of the basic demands of the Freedom Charter is above forms of organisation that the working class, and indeed black people, may fashion in the course of struggles. In other words, alliances and other forms of organisation are relevant to the extent that they maximisethe march towards realising the vision outlined in the Freedom Charter.

The EFF is guided by revolutionary internationalism and solidarity that defined the politics of the July 26 Movement, which led the Cuban Revolutionary struggles. EFF will partake in international struggles that seek to emancipate the economically unliberated people of Africa and the world. EFF will form part of the progressive movements in the world that stand against continued imperialist domination.

Aims and Objectives

1. To establish and sustain a society that cherishes revolutionary cultural values and to create conditions for total political and economic emancipation, prosperity and equitable distribution of wealth of the nation.
2. To attain and defend the National Integrity and Liberation of the oppressed black majority of South Africa.
3. To participate in the worldwide struggle for the complete eradication of imperialism, colonialism, racism and all other forms of discrimination.
4. To participate in, support and promote all struggles for the attainment of the complete independence and unity of African states and by extension, the African continent.
5. To oppose resolutely, tribalism, regionalism, religious and cultural intolerance.
6. To oppose oppression of women and the oppression of all other gendered persons.
7. To oppose patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia and any cultural or religious practices that promotes the oppression of anyone, women in particular.

In the space of four short hours on 12 February 2015, South Africans witnessed their stable 20-year-old democracy unravel amid scenes of chaos and violence in Parliament. Since then, many political observers and analysts are lamenting a system broken by the very political leaders elected to preserve it. The occasion was President Jacob Zuma’s annual State of the Nation Address on February 12 - a long, clunky speech that included such rhetoric as “we have developed a plan which involves both short, medium-term and long-term responses” - accented by Zuma’s customarily stilted, oddly cadenced delivery.

It wasn’t the speech itself that grabbed attention, but the run-up. It started with widespread outrage over phone-jamming inside Parliament; progressed to a shouting match led by radical MPs that in turn led to a scuffle with armed security; which then prompted an angry outburst and a mass walkout by the official opposition party.

Malema took issue with Zuma’s six years at the helm, blaming him for sugar-coating the reality for most South Africans. “When you are telling a so-called good story here, the children on Zenzele informal settlement do not have water,” Malema said. “When you are telling a so-called good story here, the children of Sxwetla sleep side by side with rats. When you are telling a so-called good story here, mineworkers continue to suffer indignity in the belly of the earth."

Critics of the party have pointed to its leaders’ fiery, sometimes race-baiting, rhetoric; at its far-left policies; at parliamentarians’ insistence on wearing bright red workman’s uniforms for official appearances; and its habit, in its early days, of getting into violent scuffles in parliament.

But over the year 2018, the party had grown in ambition and maturity. It has encroached on the ANC’s traditional base — South Africa’s poor black majority. Because of that fierce loyalty, the ruling ANC has been forced to pay attention to the far-left party’s calls for land redistribution without compensation.

The party, which appeals to South Africa’s black youth, has come to dominate university politics, winning student elections late last year at several prominent institutions, including the University of Johannesburg, the University of Cape Town and the University of Zululand. The movement was gaining supporters in urban areas, where adherents have protested for free university education and assistance for upwardly mobile young South Africans. Here at the University of Johannesburg, which has nearly 50,000 students, the EFF took over the Student Representative Council for the first time.