Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) treasurer-general Omphile Maotwe, who is also the party’s Tshwane mayoral candidate, says that despite former leaders of the Red Berets leaving to form or join other political parties, as well as the party’s controversial stances on immigration, the EFF has seen growth as it approaches the 4 November elections.
Maotwe made the remarks during the Mail & Guardian’s Political Pulse interview on Tuesday.
After the 2024 general election, the party’s then-deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, former chairperson Dali Mpofu and other members of Parliament left to join the Jacob Zuma-led uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party).
This came after the party saw its share of the vote drop from 14% to 9%. Despite this, Maotwe insisted that following the mass exodus of leaders and the impact of the MK Party, the EFF had grown, showing signs that it could perform well in the upcoming elections.
“People felt alone and left. It’s sad for them because they are leaving an organisation that is very organised, that is led by a visionary and that has got so much potential and that will take over this country,” she said.
“The leader you are talking about [Shivambu] has not done much for the EFF. He left; we are fine.
“The membership of the EFF has actually grown since then, so there’s no indication that we could be missing anything. We’ve grown.”
Maotwe said that when Shivambu was in the party, the EFF’s membership in a ward stood at around 100 members.
However, since his departure, the party has changed its requirements, saying a branch of the Red Berets needed to have 200 members to be in good standing.
She said no party, including Shivambu’s newly formed Afrika Mayibuye and the MK Party, would threaten the EFF’s support.
“We have done our own model and tested our own strength.
“We had three mayoral launches in Gauteng, in Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Johannesburg, on the same day. All of them were full.
“On the next day, we had all six remaining municipalities launching their manifestos, and all of them were well attended.
“Even with the research, we just came from the Central Election Task Force meeting where we invited Ipsos to come and do a presentation — showing that there are signs of growth and there’s no doubt that we will do well.”
Maotwe said the EFF had seen a reduction in votes in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in 2024, which she attributed to the MK Party effect.
“Anywhere we lost votes in the country was because of the effect of the MK.
“We didn’t know it but now we know what we are dealing with. We can rest assured that it will not defeat us anywhere. Maybe they still have a lot of influence in KwaZulu- Natal but where we are in Tshwane, there’s no MK.”
Some have attributed the party’s poor electoral performance to its controversial stances on immigration.
With some South Africans accusing foreign nationals of taking their jobs and blaming illegal immigrants for rising crime, the EFF has continued to call for a united Africa.
The party has also called for undocumented migrants to be documented so that the country is aware of who is living within its borders.
“The messaging is correct. The establishment is the one that is distorting the message.
“Most of the political parties agree with the EFF that undocumented foreign nationals must be documented so that you know who is in the country, so we can hold those people to account. “People must not just think undocumented foreigners are black. Even whites come here undocumented and stay for a very long time. Our messaging is very clear. There’s nothing wrong with how it’s been communicated.
“The establishment is deliberately distorting it with the hope that it will dent our integrity and our image.”
Maotwe added that people fully understood what the EFF was saying and agreed with the party’s position that Africa was united before borders were imposed by colonialists.
She said the party was calling for Africa to unite as one country, with one currency, one president, one military and one justice system.
“Even with that, we are still growing. There were parties jumping on stages saying ‘abahambe’ and they are far from being anything near the EFF.
If that was the measure, they would have gotten all the votes that the EFF would have gotten.”
“We have had a lot of engagements on the ground. We have now changed the leadership.”