Malema’s DA choice has merit

Reports of about a dozen supposed Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) members, or voters, protesting against their party outside Joburg’s City Hall yesterday called for a large pinch of salt. Sections of social media were also playing host to the complaint by some party members that the EFF was somehow selling them out by agreeing to vote with the DA for the election of the speaker, mayor and other senior positions in the new mayoral committee.

If these really were EFF supporters angry at the party’s leadership over the decision to side with the “racist DA”, they were displaying a level of political naivety the relatively young people leading their party are not. The EFF spokesperson was particularly annoyed by it all, accusing those behind the campaign of being members of the ANC in disguise – but of course that is mere speculation. It could be that the EFF has, indeed, disappointed some of its supporters.

But what did they expect Julius Malema and company to do? Were they to not side with either the DA or the ANC, elections would probably have had to be held again, with a risk of the ANC going all out to stage a comeback and win a clear majority.

If they wanted the EFF to choose the ANC, despite the ruling party’s refusal to give in to opposition parties’ demands for President Jacob Zuma to be removed from power, the EFF would have been a neutered force and the stuff of mockery.

An EFF-DA agreement is an odd marriage, but makes political sense. How long it will last is something we have no precedent for in this country, but it offers the EFF the best solution to the difficult decision of what needed to be done – and done right now.

But if Zuma goes, then all bets are off over who the EFF will choose.

Malema started his party partly in anger at the ANC, and particularly at Zuma. Anyone who voted for him without understanding that basic fact possibly needed to read all that invisible fine print at the end of the party’s manifesto and constitution.