Editorial: The politics of bullshit

The Economic Freedom Fighters once made a stab at intellectual credibility. Perhaps smarting from the comments about leader Julius Malema’s poor high school grades, they insisted from the start on their deeply thought-out wisdom. Their first manifesto was published as a book, The Coming Revolution, and it was a reasonably skillful rehash of old Marxist theory.

Since then, there have been noisy moments in which the party insists on its credentials — MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, for instance, harped on about his PhD in contrast to a Democratic Alliance MP’s lowly matric.

But maybe the EFF has come to believe its own propaganda, as well as believing its following is so uneducated it will swallow anything the party says.

And then it went on to deliver a staggering series of nonsense views, from the conspiracy theory about Pravin Gordhan having illicit billions salted away in Canada to, more recently, saying President Cyril Ramaphosa isn’t really as rich as he claims and that it’s all a front. This past week, the EFF floated a particularly bizarre notion to do with an assassination plot against Malema, using as an excuse for some arbitrary violence perpetrated by its MPs in the parliamentary precinct.

Citizens simply shake their heads in disbelief. We may have once thought the EFF had some good ideas, and at least provided a left-wing goad to the ANC. It contributed meaningfully to the eventual downfall of Jacob Zuma. Its leaders used to act like constitutional democrats, whatever their Marxist manifesto said. Now their election manifesto is simply pie in the sky, and they seem willing to say any rubbish that comes into their heads. It would be hard to vote for the EFF when you can’t believe a word they say.