EFF secretary-general Marshall Dlamini has come out in defence of Floyd Shivambu, the party’s former deputy president, saying the leadership of the party should take collective responsibility for its electoral losses in KwaZulu-Natal.
Speaking to the Sunday Times this week, Dlamini, who will run for a second term when the party goes to its elective conference, said the decision to deploy Shivambu to KwaZulu-Natal was made by the party’s central command team (CCT) in a bid to strengthen its base in the province.
This comes after party president Julius Malema called into question Shivambu’s motives in KwaZulu-Natal and attributed the party’s dismal performance there to him. Shivambu has since defected to the MK Party.
At the EFF’s Gauteng general assembly in November, Malema said Shivambu had been divorced from reality in KwaZulu-Natal.
There is no relationship [with Floyd]. It’s done. I am a leader of the EFF, [and] he is a leader of MK
— Marshall Dlamini, EFF secretary-general
“It may even be true, and more worrying, that he was aware of the damage to come in KZN and kept quiet, because he had already chosen to betray this movement,” the EFF president said.
But Dlamini acknowledged that the party’s leaders were responsible for taking the decision to deploy Shivambu to the battleground province and should take responsibility for it.
“It was a collective decision all of us took to say, ‘Let’s do the deployment as [we see fit].’ Unfortunately, it led to what we [have now] ... We take that responsibility because it was our decision as [the] CCT. It was not Floyd’s decision, and we take responsibility for what worked and what didn’t,” he said.
The party’s top leaders will have to explain its electoral decline to delegates at the EFF's elective conference — dubbed the national people’s assembly — this week.
Dlamini’s defence of Shivambu comes in spite of the erstwhile deputy president’s fractured relationship with the party owing to his shock defection.
“There is no relationship [with Floyd]. It’s done. I am a leader of the EFF, [and] he is a leader of MK. The last time I spoke to him was when he was leaving this office,” he said.
The EFF were replaced by the MK Party as the third-largest party in the country in the May 2024 polls, the red berets dropping to fourth position. The party was decimated in KwaZulu-Natal, receiving just 2.56% of the provincial vote, down from 9.96% in 2019.
Dlamini has been credited with the 2019 result in KwaZulu-Natal. It was widely reported that he was removed from the province after he fell out with its leaders.
After Dlamini’s removal, Shivambu was tasked with strengthening the party in KwaZulu-Natal. After he failed to gain traction with EFF supporters, the party moved him to the Eastern Cape two months ahead of the elections.
“Clearly it was a bad decision, and we have accepted that and done the analysis,” Dlamini said.
He said part of the EFF’s electoral decline could be attributed to the loss of votes the party acquired in 2019 as a result of voter dissatisfaction with the ANC’s handling of former president Jacob Zuma. “The new numbers we got in the 2019 elections — some 300,000 votes — are the ones that came in and went out,” he said.
Dlamini apportioned some of the blame for his party’s electoral decline to the Covid lockdown, which to some extent prevented the organisation from connecting with KwaZulu-Natal voters.
“If we have the same issue going forward — where people are not happy with an organisation and [therefore] temporarily sit with the EFF — we need to make sure that, [once] they have opened the door [and come through it], we lock it [behind them].”
Dlamini said the party leadership should have treated Zuma voters as a special project, engaging, investing more energy in and conscientising them about the EFF’s policies.
“It caught us off guard, and it’s a mixture of things. It can’t be just a one-answer solution [where we] say, ‘This is what transpired.’ We know who [the lost voters] are, and we know going forward, when we get [additional voter] numbers, we must not think this is what we worked for.
“We must not be overly excited. We must appreciate it, but we must also ask, ‘How do we make sure that whatever territory we have gained gets defended and protected?”
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