Floyd Shivambu. Photo by Delwyn Verasamy
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema has announced the redeployment of his deputy, Floyd Shivambu, from KwaZulu-Natal following internal talks on whether he was failing to ensure the party regains its support ahead of the elections.
Speaking at the party’s Eastern Cape manifesto launch on Thursday, Malema said the EFF’s leadership had released its secretary general, Marshall Dlamini, to work in KwaZulu-Natal, adding that it did not want any stones to be left unturned in the election campaign.
“The deputy president of the EFF will now work here in the Eastern Cape. You, comrades, have done a wonderful job, we are proud of you. You have oiled the machinery of the EFF,” he said.
The Mail & Guardian previously reported that Malema and the party’s top officials would meet to discuss a possible redeployment of Shivambu.
This came after reports that he had failed to connect with people in KwaZulu-Natal and regain the party’s momentum in the province.
This is not Shivambu’s first time as a national deployee in the Eastern Cape.
In an interview with the M&G in February shortly after the EFF’s manifesto launch in Durban, Malema said with the birth of Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which is mainly focused on wooing the KwaZulu-Natal vote, and the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) channelling their resources to the province, only a naive party would not relook at its strategy.
KwaZulu-Natal will be one of the most hotly contested ones in the coming elections, with the ANC projected to lose its majority. The EFF sent Shivambu to the province last year to stabilise its ground forces after factional battles threatened to tear apart its previous electoral gains.
Shivambu was also mandated to bring back party members who had left the EFF after a rift between Dlamini and former provincial chair Vusi Khoza.
Shivambu has been criticised in some quarters after the EFF recently struggled to fill the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban for its manifesto launch.
Malema’s decision to launch the EFF manifesto in KwaZulu-Natal was aimed at demonstrating to the ANC and the IFP, which also launched manifestos at the same venue, that the EFF has a significant presence in the province.
One leader said Malema’s frustration with the organising team was that the EFF failed to draw more people than it did to the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg for the party’s 10th birthday, because FNB Stadium is bigger than Moses Mabhida.
But in the interview with the M&G, Malema insisted that if the party changed tack in KwaZulu-Natal and reshuffled the warm bodies from the national leadership, this would have nothing to do with the manifesto launch, which the EFF maintains was a huge success.
He added that should the party decide to move Shivambu elsewhere, this would not be the first time it has reshuffled its national deployee in KwaZulu-Natal, having previously done so with Mbuyiseni Ndlozi and Dlamini.
Malema said the EFF was moving up a gear in its election work in the province, adding that its leadership would assess whether Shivambu was the right person for the job.
“Is he the right person? Can we find someone else? Given the developments of the MK party and the dynamics around that and the ANC’s attitude towards KZN and the IFP thinking that this is a battleground, do we maintain the deputy president or do we bring an alternative that will match what those people are doing?” he said.