THE conduct of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in Parliament has been widely criticised by all comers over the past month or two. The general thrust of that criticism seems to be that the party’s representatives do not properly understand or exercise parliamentary protocol and, if they want to be more effective, they need to become better, more traditional parliamentarians.
This, however, is to profoundly misunderstand the EFF brand and its purpose. It might only be a pseudo-revolutionary movement but the EFF’s goal is not to comply, it is to disrupt. Expecting it to fit into a predetermined mould is to expect chaos to fit into a science laboratory beaker.
A good illustration of this confusion is the Democratic Alliance (DA). In its entirely quantitative assessment of its own performance thus far, DA chief whip John Steenhuisen stated, "the EFF have asked zero questions of the executive in this term", arguing that, "the lack of questions from the EFF and the ANC (African National Congress) is a direct sign that they do not intend to hold the executive to account". Others have criticised the EFF’s abuse of points of order in debate as obstinate and infuriating.
But this analysis is a bit myopic. The DA is projecting its own standards onto the EFF. In its collective mind, the EFF would best serve its representatives if it behaved more like the Democratic Party (DP) did in the late 1990s. The DP, a tiny minority party with 1.7% of the vote, punched well above its weight by brilliantly utilising parliamentary mechanisms such as written and oral questions, debates and committees. In this way it made a disproportionate impact on the media.
But here’s the real point: the EFF is not the DP. Its purpose, hardwired into its brand, is to oppose the legitimacy of the ANC and those institutions it controls. And it believes Parliament to be one of them. If the EFF started to behave politely, like the DA does, asking appropriate questions and getting no answers, it would be the death of the party.
The moment the EFF starts to lose its fight, the disruption, the chaos, it starts to erode its brand. It’s how it stays alive. Like a shark, it must keep swimming.
Admittedly, at the heart of the EFF is a massive contradiction. If it really is a revolutionary movement, it should never have stood for election to Parliament in the first place. By doing so it tacitly endorsed the legitimacy of the institution. What other genuine revolutionary movement has ever endorsed a Parliament? Most seek to destroy them as symbols of power and oppression. But the EFF is not the real deal on that front, nor does it care a jot for ideological consistency. It is a populist revolutionary movement. And by populist, I mean the kind that likes a good photo on the red carpet.
Like it or lump it, everyone is going to have to live with that contradiction. It’s not going anywhere. But the upshot of it all is that you have a national party with an agenda to mock, disrupt and upturn all those parliamentary practices we take for read.
Its members wear overalls, not suits or ties. It believes the speaker is illegitimate and biased in favour of the ANC, and it approaches speeches like they are a barroom argument, constantly interrupting and holding up the delivery of a message. Which is ironic, given that the ANC has done everything in its power the past 20 years to suck the life out of meaningful exchanges in the house anyway.
The EFF doesn’t want order. It wants chaos. And the more chaos it creates, the more its constituents see it as challenging the natural order of things, the better for it.
The great irony in all of these points is that the EFF has a legitimate grievance. It should be allowed to wear what it wants, the speaker’s ostensible neutrality is a very real problem and debates in Parliament are a farce. And so, from a rather lateral angle, it has stumbled onto some of the biggest issues facing Parliament today. In doing so, it has put the DA to shame. It should be the DA championing solutions to these problems (among others of course) but instead it has been forced to watch on as the EFF rules the roost.
The EFF has found a way to make problems long since described in words and rhetoric into very real, visible and palpable confrontations. And so it has brought Parliament alive in a way the DA cannot simply because it embodies those issues.
Quite frankly the EFF’s attitude couldn’t be healthier for our parliamentary debate. It is good, once in a while, to challenge the natural order of things. And because the EFF’s style of pseudo-revolutionary politics means its protests are limited to things like sit-ins and walkouts, they hardly comprise anything more than a nuisance. But it does make problems only previously pontificated about into very real and exciting conflicts. And seeing is believing.
There is a lesson in all of this for the DA. Its attitude to date, as a "loyal opposition", has been to buy into the way in which the ANC controls Parliament and to try to exercise accountability on the majority party’s terms. The result, really, is a lot of necessary complaining: questions aren’t answered, ministers don’t appear, debates are hollow, and so on. But in doing so the DA has sacrificed some ability to challenge the very legitimacy of the ANC’s approach to Parliament in the first place.
Just to be clear, this is not to downplay the importance of keeping those formal mechanisms alive or of demonstrating best practice. We are a young democracy and the precedents we set today will resonate for years to come. These things are not mutually exclusive. But until the EFF came along, there was no other way. Every other opposition party from the Independent Democrats to the Congress of the People have all been sucked into the DA’s paradigm and tried to beat it at its own game. They all lost.
The EFF has a new game. And the last thing it is going to do is behave like the DA or the DP of old. It is just silly of the DA to hold it to that standard. The EFF couldn’t care less.
The problem the DA has is that unless it can find a way to demonstrate that it too can illustrate and not just talk about the very real problems plaguing our democratic centre, it is going to keep playing second fiddle in the media to the EFF. When faced with the choice between someone complaining about and someone acting on an injustice, the eye is naturally drawn towards the action. That is a very real problem for the DA, one exaggerated by the fact that their leader in Parliament has very little to offer other than rhetoric.
A final point: the EFF would be silly to dismiss entirely the formal mechanisms available to it. They can serve its agenda and brand. Used properly they can be a platform to demonstrate its unhappiness. That doesn’t mean submitting 100 questions. But it does mean submitting some, and using them in the right way. Likewise, one can abuse the rules to create chaos but the ANC does regularly violate the rules itself and being able to point that out credibly would also work in the EFF’s favour.
Until then, it is wrongheaded to keep trying to understand the EFF from within the DA’s paradigm. It has rejected that. Its brand is not compliance, it is disruption and on that front it is delivering its brand perfectly and stealing a march on the DA at the same time. The EFF might have 6% and the DA 22%, but so far as parliamentary impact goes, the DA seems to operating in the EFF’s shadow.
Floyd Shivambu, left, and Julius Malema. Picture: TREVOR SAMSON
THE conduct of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in Parliament has been widely criticised by all comers over the past month or two. The general thrust of that criticism seems to be that the party’s representatives do not properly understand or exercise parliamentary protocol and, if they want to be more effective, they need to become better, more traditional parliamentarians.
This, however, is to profoundly misunderstand the EFF brand and its purpose. It might only be a pseudo-revolutionary movement but the EFF’s goal is not to comply, it is to disrupt. Expecting it to fit into a predetermined mould is to expect chaos to fit into a science laboratory beaker.
A good illustration of this confusion is the Democratic Alliance (DA). In its entirely quantitative assessment of its own performance thus far, DA chief whip John Steenhuisen stated, "the EFF have asked zero questions of the executive in this term", arguing that, "the lack of questions from the EFF and the ANC (African National Congress) is a direct sign that they do not intend to hold the executive to account". Others have criticised the EFF’s abuse of points of order in debate as obstinate and infuriating.
But this analysis is a bit myopic. The DA is projecting its own standards onto the EFF. In its collective mind, the EFF would best serve its representatives if it behaved more like the Democratic Party (DP) did in the late 1990s. The DP, a tiny minority party with 1.7% of the vote, punched well above its weight by brilliantly utilising parliamentary mechanisms such as written and oral questions, debates and committees. In this way it made a disproportionate impact on the media.
But here’s the real point: the EFF is not the DP. Its purpose, hardwired into its brand, is to oppose the legitimacy of the ANC and those institutions it controls. And it believes Parliament to be one of them. If the EFF started to behave politely, like the DA does, asking appropriate questions and getting no answers, it would be the death of the party.
The moment the EFF starts to lose its fight, the disruption, the chaos, it starts to erode its brand. It’s how it stays alive. Like a shark, it must keep swimming.
Admittedly, at the heart of the EFF is a massive contradiction. If it really is a revolutionary movement, it should never have stood for election to Parliament in the first place. By doing so it tacitly endorsed the legitimacy of the institution. What other genuine revolutionary movement has ever endorsed a Parliament? Most seek to destroy them as symbols of power and oppression. But the EFF is not the real deal on that front, nor does it care a jot for ideological consistency. It is a populist revolutionary movement. And by populist, I mean the kind that likes a good photo on the red carpet.
Like it or lump it, everyone is going to have to live with that contradiction. It’s not going anywhere. But the upshot of it all is that you have a national party with an agenda to mock, disrupt and upturn all those parliamentary practices we take for read.
Its members wear overalls, not suits or ties. It believes the speaker is illegitimate and biased in favour of the ANC, and it approaches speeches like they are a barroom argument, constantly interrupting and holding up the delivery of a message. Which is ironic, given that the ANC has done everything in its power the past 20 years to suck the life out of meaningful exchanges in the house anyway.
The EFF doesn’t want order. It wants chaos. And the more chaos it creates, the more its constituents see it as challenging the natural order of things, the better for it.
The great irony in all of these points is that the EFF has a legitimate grievance. It should be allowed to wear what it wants, the speaker’s ostensible neutrality is a very real problem and debates in Parliament are a farce. And so, from a rather lateral angle, it has stumbled onto some of the biggest issues facing Parliament today. In doing so, it has put the DA to shame. It should be the DA championing solutions to these problems (among others of course) but instead it has been forced to watch on as the EFF rules the roost.
The EFF has found a way to make problems long since described in words and rhetoric into very real, visible and palpable confrontations. And so it has brought Parliament alive in a way the DA cannot simply because it embodies those issues.
Quite frankly the EFF’s attitude couldn’t be healthier for our parliamentary debate. It is good, once in a while, to challenge the natural order of things. And because the EFF’s style of pseudo-revolutionary politics means its protests are limited to things like sit-ins and walkouts, they hardly comprise anything more than a nuisance. But it does make problems only previously pontificated about into very real and exciting conflicts. And seeing is believing.
There is a lesson in all of this for the DA. Its attitude to date, as a "loyal opposition", has been to buy into the way in which the ANC controls Parliament and to try to exercise accountability on the majority party’s terms. The result, really, is a lot of necessary complaining: questions aren’t answered, ministers don’t appear, debates are hollow, and so on. But in doing so the DA has sacrificed some ability to challenge the very legitimacy of the ANC’s approach to Parliament in the first place.
Just to be clear, this is not to downplay the importance of keeping those formal mechanisms alive or of demonstrating best practice. We are a young democracy and the precedents we set today will resonate for years to come. These things are not mutually exclusive. But until the EFF came along, there was no other way. Every other opposition party from the Independent Democrats to the Congress of the People have all been sucked into the DA’s paradigm and tried to beat it at its own game. They all lost.
The EFF has a new game. And the last thing it is going to do is behave like the DA or the DP of old. It is just silly of the DA to hold it to that standard. The EFF couldn’t care less.
The problem the DA has is that unless it can find a way to demonstrate that it too can illustrate and not just talk about the very real problems plaguing our democratic centre, it is going to keep playing second fiddle in the media to the EFF. When faced with the choice between someone complaining about and someone acting on an injustice, the eye is naturally drawn towards the action. That is a very real problem for the DA, one exaggerated by the fact that their leader in Parliament has very little to offer other than rhetoric.
A final point: the EFF would be silly to dismiss entirely the formal mechanisms available to it. They can serve its agenda and brand. Used properly they can be a platform to demonstrate its unhappiness. That doesn’t mean submitting 100 questions. But it does mean submitting some, and using them in the right way. Likewise, one can abuse the rules to create chaos but the ANC does regularly violate the rules itself and being able to point that out credibly would also work in the EFF’s favour.
Until then, it is wrongheaded to keep trying to understand the EFF from within the DA’s paradigm. It has rejected that. Its brand is not compliance, it is disruption and on that front it is delivering its brand perfectly and stealing a march on the DA at the same time. The EFF might have 6% and the DA 22%, but so far as parliamentary impact goes, the DA seems to operating in the EFF’s shadow.
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