File photo: EFF leaders during their 10th birthday celebration. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
The Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) non-negotiable economic pillars have been criticised for being “fragile and evanescent as a sand castle against a rising tide”, according to a report by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR).
The report was released on Tuesday, after the EFF’s election manifesto launch over the weekend.
Written by Ivo Vegter, a researcher and columnist for the IRR’s online newspaper the Daily Friend, the report said the party’s approach to economic freedom relied heavily on populist measures and impractical policies rather than “grounded principles of economic theory and empirical evidence”.
But during a webinar for the launch of the report, Vegter also said that although the EFF was often characterised as “one dimensional”, it was not superficial. Some of the party’s grievances were legitimate, he said.
The IRR is a research and policy think-tank that describes itself as promoting classical liberalism through non-racialism, a market economy and property rights. The IRR is also linked to Democratic Alliance (DA) federal chairperson Helen Zille, who in 2019 joined the think-tank to contribute to its research on the EFF’s land position, which calls for expropriation without compensation.
When EFF leader Julius Malema announced in 2013 that he would be forming the EFF, his stance on land gained him popularity, particularly amongst the youth. Many of the party’s followers had criticised the ANC for failing to return the “land to their rightful owners” despite being in power for more than 20 years.
During the webinar, Vegter said the party’s stance on land violated private property rights. “That it will do this without compensation is problematic. Land that has been legally acquired, by purchase or inheritance, is private property. To deprive people of that property is morally wrong.”
He said the EFF’s emphasis on the nationalisation of key industries, land expropriation without compensation and a blanket increase in social welfare spending overlooked the complexities of economic dynamics, which could potentially lead to detrimental consequences for the country.
Nationalisation of these critical industries has failed, with the country’s state-owned enterprises — Transnet, Eskom and the Post Office — being over-indebted and perennially on the verge of collapse, he said.
He added: “It is tone-deaf, at best, to propose that the government should nationalise much of the rest of the economy. That the South African economy can be transformed to address unemployment, poverty, and inequality without transfer of wealth to the people as a whole is neither a supposition, nor is it illusory.”
Vegter said the EFF’s proposals to limit political interference in the operation of state-owned entities, while laudable, do not promise to be effective because it neglects to outline a credible strategy to limit and prosecute corruption in the government.
He said that state control, as emphasised by the EFF, was “patronising” and “a nasty ideology”.
“The EFF thinks dignity is about material conditions. Socialists have a very appealing message to people who don’t understand economics – and there are many of them, even the educated,” Vegter said.
Voting EFF would not solve the problems people have with the ANC, he said.
As reported by the Mail & Guardian, during the party’s manifesto launch, Malema said an EFF government would have the final say on the appointments of the governor of the South African Reserve Bank, chapter nine institutions, state-owned enterprises and the inspector general of intelligence.
“The EFF government will change the constitutional structure, including the abolition of the provincial sphere of government, accompanied by a mass restructuring and strengthening of local government spheres into a unitary state,” the manifesto said.
In its manifesto document, the EFF once again called for the Constitution to be amended to change the National Prosecution Authority to a chapter nine institution. This means it will be independent, and subject only to the Constitution and the law.
The EFF has continued to gain support across the country, with political polls — including by market researcher Ipsos — finding that the Red Berets could remove the DA as the official opposition, placing it in the running to form a coalition with the ANC.
Despite strained relations between the two parties in Gauteng, the EFF is likely to join the ANC should coalition talks emerge following the national elections.
Political analyst Ongama Mtimka has previously said that the EFF has ascended to become the nation’s third-largest political party by assuming the mantle traditionally held by the ANC.
The EFF’s emphasis on land matters and employment enables black voters to transfer their support from the ANC to the EFF “without altering their political alignment”, Mtimka said during an interview late last year.
On Tuesday, Mtimka said the EFF’s manifesto speech reasserted the party’s core message found in its founding manifesto of 2013 and 2019, showing growth and confidence in the party’s electoral position.
“The party has become confident about its potential to continue growing in the South African electoral market. They reasserted their cardinal pillars with a mixed economy approach with a stronger role to play for the state than under the ANC. It is strongly statist but has room for the private sector. This is visible in that Julius Malema speaks about the ability to attract investment for industrialisation,” he said.