OPINION | EFF – making impactful waves in five short years

This weekend marks five years since 1,100 activists from across nine provinces gathered in the winter cold of Soweto at Uncle’s Tom Hall for a gathering called the National People’s Assembly on “What is to be done?”.

They committed to forming the Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) as a political party.

The decision was informed by the fact that two decades of political freedom had not borne significant transformation to give economic freedom, particularly for majority of Africans who remained on the margins of society.

The scenes of August 2012, when police shot 112 striking miners at Marikana killing 34 of them, renewed images of massacres by the apartheid state, only this time it was by a democratic government.

It vindicated the view that the post-1994 government maintained the apartheid and white-supremacist state, and as a consequence the majority had been reduced into a voting but powerless majority.

The EFF’s seven founding and non-negotiable cardinal pillars and its posture as a Marxist-Leninist and Fanonian movement has earned it hatred from liberal quotas.

Many have dismissed it as another ANC breakaway such as the Congress of the People (Cope) or even branded the EFF “fascist” for demanding the democratisation of land ownership and economic participation.

The EFF announced its candidacy to contest elections a mere 10 months before the 2014 general election and gained 6% of the vote – or 31 MPs. They have injected vibrancy and dynamism into parliament, drawing the attention of millions of South Africans to parliamentary activities which had been largely ignored since 1994.

Though participating for the first time in the country’s local government elections, the EFF has become a kingmaker in key metros with more than 800 councillors in all municipal councils.

The EFF is by far the fastest-growing and arguably most stable political formation – and most consistently committed to its founding principles.

It’s on record that the ruling party rejected the red berets’ 6% offer of its national vote to allow for the amendment of the constitution for the state to expropriate land without compensation, only to backtrack at its December conference at Nasrec to adopt the same policy.

Parliament for the first time since 1994, led by the EFF, is engaging communities on the possible amendment of Section 25 to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation for purposes of equal redistribution.

Only denialists would refuse to concede that it has been the efforts of the EFF that has forced parliament to open itself up on the land question.

Parliament has also published in the national gazette invitations for public comment on a draft bill proposed by the EFF to amend the Banks Act to make it possible for state-owned companies to register in terms of the act and to conduct the business of commercial banks.

This process would enable among others Post Bank to have commercial functions and adopt a developmental mandate.

This is all in line with the EFF’s commitment to achieving the nationalisation of mines, banks and strategic sectors of the economy.

In its short existence the EFF has also demonstrated the difference between quality and quantity, leading in the process of insourcing over 1,600 contract security guards in the City of Johannesburg. This has seen them get permanent jobs and raised their wages from R4,500 to R14,500 with benefits.

The EFF has successfully held the powerful to account in parliament, in provincial legislatures and municipal councils.

Even after attacking the EFF for calling on potential students to go to universities and demand free education, many universities made provisions to allow walk-ins.

Above all else, the EFF has instilled confidence for Africans to demand their rightful place at the table of South Africa on issues of economy, education, land and health care. And also to speak truth to power.