EFF leader Julius Malema said “heads will roll” in North West and Limpopo, where the party experienced some of its hardest knocks in the 2024 elections.
Speaking at the party’s 11th anniversary in Kimberley, Northern Cape, on Saturday, 27 July 2024, he said the structures in the two provinces would have to account for their shortcomings.
“Especially the Bojanala comrades – how do we lose 25,000 votes in Bojanala in the North West and there is no explanation? Some heads will roll.
“The heads have rolled in Limpopo. That is why there is new leadership. We are not going to sit back and reward laziness. We must punish laziness; we must punish factionalism and people must earn their seat at this dinner table,” Malema told supporters at the AR Abass sports ground in Kimberley.
The EFF received 17.37% of the provincial vote in North West in this election compared with 18.64% in 2019. In Limpopo, the red berets won 14.12% in 2024 compared with 14.43% in 2019.
The party’s national command council team said it would dissolve its Limpopo structures after its poor showing in the elections.
Read more: Elections Dashboard
While the EFF has been relegated to being the fourth-largest party in the country after the 2024 elections, with the uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party taking over its third-place position, it increased support in Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Free State. Malema thanked the party’s ground forces in these provinces for their hard work.
“We are where we are today because of the Northern Cape… Here, in Northern Cape, we are proud of the increase in support that the EFF received. Here in the Northern Cape, the ANC was defeated, and the corrupt [Premier] Zamani Saul is only in power because of the support of the racists of the Freedom Front Plus.
“We recorded the same increases, however modest, in Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Free State. These comrades fought a good fight against the enemy forces that wanted to destroy our movement,” he said.
Despite the party’s decrease in support in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), Malema backed the leadership in the province, highlighting that the MK party was also a factor in the recent elections. Malema, however, did mention that the structures in the province need to be strengthened.
“The comrades of KZN fought, they didn’t see the animal called MK coming, concentrating on the bastards that were combining against us, only to find out that MK was plotting, and we cannot see it.
“It was not an easy fight, with limited resources but they fought, and nothing will happen to them. They remain the leaders of EFF in KZN. Look, even if you lose, know that you have put up a fight. Do not lose like a coward,” Malema said.
EFF conference
Handing out further punishment to underperforming structures, Malema reiterated that the EFF’s national conference, which is due to take place in December, will only be attended by branches that have contributed to the party’s electoral successes.
He said that branches who obtained at least 10% of the vote in their wards could participate.
“Only branches that received 10% of the votes cast in their ward will qualify to send one delegate to the EFF’s 3rd National People’s Assembly because it means that EFF is present in that ward. If a branch cannot, after 10 years, obtain at least 10% of the votes, it simply means that we do not have a branch command team. It cannot be that we have branch delegates deciding on national leadership in the absence of reasonable EFF presence in their wards,” he reiterated.
Malema has already confirmed that he will again be running to be the leader at the party’s upcoming elective conference. If he wins, he will be the only leader of the EFF remaining since its inception in 2013.
Malema said the party needed to start looking at ways of arresting its decline.
“Overall, fellow fighters, we must answer the difficult questions in productive ways so that we do not collapse the organisation of the poor masses of our people.We must pay attention to entrenching the EFF in branches and voting districts [VDs]. Is it not time to rethink our organisational model and redirect everything to centring the branch and the VD in everything we do?
“Perhaps even the financial model of the EFF should move away from big events, to branch-based activities that have direct impact in our communities,” he said. DM
Daily Maverick
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