EFF shutdown call: a stern test for Ramaphosa

BCan he stop the EFF’s intimidation in its tracks? If he cannot, the political and economic consequences are dire

y late Friday afternoon, the army was out on some streets in Gauteng and EFF members were out on some streets in East London and Mdantsane “directing traffic”, as a friend there told me. By sunset tomorrow we will know who or what has prevailed in our country. The might of the state and the rule of law, or chaos and intimidation. Welcome to the EFF’s ‘national shutdown’, organised to protest against the economic damage of Eskom’s load-shedding and to call for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s resignation in the wake of revelations of the theft of dollars hidden in a sofa at his game farm in Limpopo.

The protest will not fix Eskom and it won’t move Ramaphosa. But that may not be its real intent. EFF leader Julius Malema needs to test his political muscle before campaigning starts for next year’s elections. The extent to which he can bring people onto the streets tomorrow may be a good gauge of the electoral support he can expect then.

The EFF thrives on chaos and spectacle. Malema has said his people will be on the streets tomorrow “in peace”, but heaven help anyone who opens a shop or who goes shopping because, he told a news conference, “there will be a fire there”. It isn’t a threat, you see, just a fair warning from a party mesmerised by the justifications for violence in the works of the liberation philosopher Frantz Fanon.

By yesterday the outlook was mixed. It depended on whether you believed Ramaphosa’s promise to keep the country open for business, even if tomorrow forms a neat bridge to a public holiday on Tuesday. Putco, the big bus company in Gauteng, initially said it would not run tomorrow but relented after assurances by police minister Bheki Cele and others that the state would guarantee peace on the day.

In Durban, Toyota chose not to believe Cele’s reassurances. Frankly, by now, who could blame it? It instructed its labour force to stay away from its giant Prospecton plant tomorrow, further loosening the nuts and bolts holding Toyota in this country.

In East London on

Friday, EFF supporters marched in Oxford Street, in the city centre, and marshalled traffic coming into town from the airport and traffic along a back route through the sprawling Mdantsane township. Mercedes-Benz makes cars on the side of the road from the airport into Oxford Street, though it wasn’t clear whether it would also stop production.

You cannot blame employers like Toyota for choosing to avoid violence at their businesses, even though the cost to them and the country is extreme. As a security machine the state is largely impotent. Cele is always the first to arrive at the scene just moments after the danger, the fear, has passed. The intelligence services idle their time on domestic issues.

Ramaphosa responded to the looting and riots of 2021 by moving aside state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo (then rewarding her with a grand-sounding sinecure at the World Bank which Pretoria, not the World Bank, pays for) and pulling the spy services into his own office where they report to ministers already keeping many other balls in the air.

By yesterday, police around the country had confiscated thousands of tyres being stored for burning on the roads tomorrow. They won’t get them all, though, and the fight to keep the country open for the day will go down to the wire, even though, on balance, the EFF is unlikely to have the national clout it likes to claim.

By now we should at least hope the cops know burning tyres are a diversion — people set them alight for the cameras while they attend to more serious business out of sight.

For Ramaphosa and the ANC, tomorrow is a fateful political test of authority and legitimacy, particularly after July 2021. Can he stop this intimidation in its tracks? If he cannot, the political and economic consequences are dire.

In August comes another test. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the abduction of Ukrainian children. It is a war crime. Will South Africa, as a freshly resolved ICC member, do its duty and arrest him at the Brics summit in Johannesburg in August if he attends?

That would take some balls too, but Ramaphosa could single-handedly stop the war in Ukraine if he did. He won’t, of course, but we are allowed to dream of an ethical state.

My advice for tomorrow is to go about your business. No hysterics but no heroics either. We have a government of precious little resolve and Malema somehow has to break through the 10%-11% ceiling he is stuck on in a national election. Tomorrow is make or break for him as well.