The Economic Freedom Fighters, EFF, South Africa’s third monumental party is six years old and the party is celebrated with a rally at the Kanyamazane Stadium in Mpumalanga Province.
The EFF head honcho Julius Malema was speaking at the celebrations where he said Mpumalanga was the most corrupt province in South Africa.
“Mpumalanga produced a rotten deputy president called DD Mabuza. It is in this province where schools are collapsing. It is in this province where children are still falling in pit toilets,” Malema said.
“We are in a province where people are killed for tenders and no one is arrested. It is in this province where there is no single successful court case against a politician and yet MP is the most corrupt province,” Malema said.
The EFF, conceived in 2013 and has since its fortunes continue to grow after two plebiscite cycles. It is a party that prides itself on an unflagging push for black economic empowerment.
The party’s representatives in parliament usually don red overalls and berets or hard plastic caps showing their devotion to the working class.
Addressing the thronged and crammed KaNyamazane Stadium, the EFF leader was colossally and enthusiastically extolled by his party for sticking to his guns and “continuing to champion the struggle for economic emancipation for ordinary South Africans”.
“We are cruising nicely and we will be here for many years to come because we are fighting a pertinent battle – that of our black people,” said Malema according to the City Press.
He urged all “black South Africans” to rally behind Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane as she faces what he called a cannonade of “criticism and attacks” from President Cyril Ramaphosa and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan.
EFF is led by Julius Sello Malema, an effective ardent orator who was once the leader of the youth wing of the ruling African National Congress, ANC. He was dismissed from the ANC after disagreements with the then-president Jacob Zuma.
The party appeared as an eminence grise in 2016 elections in metropolitan areas like the administrative capital Pretoria and commercial capital Johannesburg, where it backed main opposition Democratic Alliance, DA, candidates.
The EFF won 6.3% of the vote in 2014 elections making it the third prodigious party in parliament. In May 2019 polls, the party grossed 10.7% of the vote. It got 1.8 million votes and 44 seats in the national parliament up from 25.
Well-known for its far-left policies including plans to nationalize mines, the party had long been regarded as punching above its weight on the political sphere.
It played a crucial role in holding Zuma to account for embezzling state money on non-security improvements to his private residence and has shaped the debate on land expropriation without compensation, a policy the ANC has said it intends to carry out in due course.
His political rhetoric appeals to predominantly younger black voters who are disenchanted with 25 years of ANC rule.
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