Cape Town - The EFF is preparing for the Western Cape’s Provincial People’s Assembly (PPA) where new leadership will be elected to lead the province towards the national elections. Already three provinces, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and North West, have had successful PPAs.
In the Western Cape, current chairperson Melikhaya Xego will be looking to secure a second term, but faces strong opposition from current Cape Metro chairperson Unathi Ntame. Former Cape Metro treasurer, with two terms, Noluthando Majola is also expected to raise her hand for the position.
Ntame is regarded as a hard-working ground force in the EFF and he declined to take a council seat in the City of Cape Town after the 2021 local government elections.
Xego on the other hand is facing critics who believe that he has served his purpose and must allow new leaders to emerge. He was provincial secretary under Bernard Joseph when the party was formed before successfully rising to the chairperson position.
The three declined to confirm or deny that they will be vying for the provincial chairperson position, saying that the question can only be answered during the PPA.
EFF spokesperson Wandile Kasibe said their national leadership will announce the details next week about the exact date of the assembly.
“We have a meeting to finalise logistics,” he said. “Currently, the dates we have is September 30 to October 2. We can’t at this point comment on anything about the conference with the media until everything is finalised.”
The party is praised for always presenting a united front after conferences with no fighting factions as is the case with the ruling party.
Political analyst Lukhanyo Vangqa said this can be attributed to an efficient commanding control structure from the leadership downwards.
“There is an understanding of democratic centralism that once the highest decision-making body decides, everyone falls in line and adopts that particular decision.”
He added that there is an ideological coherence in the EFF and that everyone understands and accepts the ideological proposition of the politics of the EFF.
“Now you juxtapose that with the ANC, if a particular faction takes hold that would mean an ideological shift within the politics of the ANC. For example with privatisation, you know that it will not happen if the RET faction emerges, but if the CR faction emerges, there is going to be a push for the privatisation of state-owned assets. That is why the ANC factions will be so violently opposed to each other and want to fight to the bitter end, because fundamentally they do not have that ideological coherence.”
He did, however, note that the EFF is experiencing slow growth due to not having captured the various demographics.
“The EFF is only now considering speaking of putting together a trade union, and trade unions are one of the fundamental basis of mobilisation in electoral processes”
He added that the party does not have a women’s league that is able to mobilise women behind the banner of the EFF.
Weekend Argus