New calling: Mzwanele Manyi has left the Economic Freedom Fighters for the uMkhonto weSizwe party. Photo: Darren Stewart/Getty Images
For what seems like the umpteenth time, Mzwanele Manyi has cut a political membership card to pieces like a deranged self-proclaimed prophet slicing through thin air at a Katlehong primary school.
Last week, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema confirmed that the formation’s former MP Manyi had dropped the party as if it was hot in favour of joining the uMkhonto weSizwe party (MK), former president Jacob “Nine Wasted Years” Zuma’s nine-month-old stokvel.
With that, the MK party became the fourth cult home in five years of the man formerly known as Jimmy.
He began his organisational musical chairs by leaving the ANC to join the African Transformation Movement ahead of the May 2019 national and provincial elections.
In May last year, Manyi took his brand of red-light district politics to the EFF, which rewarded him handsomely with a cushy MP job a month later, presumably based on nothing but his sizeable social media numbers, which rival those of the proverbial Instagram baddie.
Manyi’s defection coincided with former EFF deputy president Floyd “VBS Vampire” Shivambu’s announcement last week he was moving to the MK party, an act of political betrayal of Malema displaying the hallmarks of Roman senator Brutus killing emperor Julius Caesar in 44BC.
After all, Malema and Shivambu co-founded the Red Berets in July 2013, when they had been booted out of the ANC the previous year.
It was unsurprising, therefore, when the EFF leader said the pain of Shivambu’s departure was akin to Malema finding out about his mother’s death.
However, Juju made it clear while addressing his party’s “ground forces” on Monday that he did not give a frog’s fat arse about Manyi leaving the EFF.
And why would he care? Manyi is renowned for jumping from one political bed to the next like a sought-after sex worker in the upmarket Ekurhuleni suburb of Bedfordview.
I posit that Manyi’s perpetual party changes have something to do with his long-stated position that South Africans should not confine themselves to one area of the country but spread as much of their love as possible.
A pertinent example of his beliefs can be found in his May 2010 interview on the predominantly Afrikaans channel kykNET, when Manyi decried the “over-concentration” of coloured people residing in the Western Cape.
At the time, he was the labour department’s director general and was reacting to trade union Solidarity’s objection to the now-adopted amendments to the Employment Equity Act that the worker organisation said would discriminate against one million coloured people in the Western Cape.
“I think it is very important for coloured people in this country to understand that South Africa belongs to them in totality, not just the Western Cape.
“So, this over-concentration of coloureds in the Western Cape is not working for them,” Manyi pontificated.
“They should spread in the rest of the country … so they must stop this over-concentration situation because they are in oversupply where they are, so you must look into the country and see where you can meet the supply,” he said.
It is evident, then, that Manyi’s predisposition to political promiscuity is premised on his need to share his skills (the jury is still out on what exactly those are) with as many movements as possible.
Once that is understood, it makes sense why he scythed through his EFF membership card with the same zeal as self-proclaimed prophet Paseka “Mboro” Motsoeneng when wielding pangas to (allegedly) kidnap his two grandchildren from Matsediso Primary School in the Ekurhuleni township of Katlehong about two weeks ago.
Mboro — after a video of the sickening “kidnapping” went viral, complete with his characteristic long, dirty nails on show — is an awaiting-trial prisoner for the alleged crimes.
For Malema, it remains to be seen how his party will fare on the electoral ballot, come the 2026 local government elections, and whether Shivambu will lead a Moses-like exodus to the potential promised land of the MK party.
As a man with few filters, Juju on Monday hinted that he would fight on and did not need those who wanted to leave the EFF.
“If you want to leave now … even if we are alone, we will still speak truth to power,” a visibly angry Malema charged.
“We must guard against opportunism; factionalism and self-entitlement; greed and all attempts to distract us from our generational mission,” he continued.
Whether Manyi’s choice of taking up membership — and then leaving the EFF faster than two shakes of a dog’s tail — was an act of opportunism and greed, I don’t know.
Why I do know, however, is that, judging by his track record, the list of political formations Manyi decides to join will continue to be longer than Mboro’s filthy nails.