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POLITRICKING: EFF marks 12 years with growing pains as door to GNU remains closed

POLITRICKING: EFF marks 12 years with growing pains as door to GNU remains closed

Eyewitness News07-05-2025
The door which leads to participation in the national coalition seemingly remains shut for the EFF, despite continued friction among coalition partners. The red berets have also made numerous attempts to engage with the ANC and made public declarations of a willingness to join the GNU.The DA has argued its persistent presence in the GNU and relationship with the ANC - though becoming increasingly acrimonious - is aimed at saving South Africa from a 'doomsday coalition' between the former liberation movement its splinter, the EFF.This is a narrative EFF member of parliament and national spokesperson Sinawo Tambo tells EWN's Politricking with Tshidi Madia, has been effective and still plays a role in keeping the red berets outside.'There's a narrative that an inclusion of the EFF in governance equals to constitutional or democratic collapse, or there's a threat to democracy, or could result in a doomsday,' said Tambo as he reflected on his party's journey since the 2024 May general elections.The watershed polls saw the reds moving from the third largest political organisation to fourth place, with its support in KwaZulu Natal decimated. Tambo said, their fate, like several other organisations was sealed by the arrival of former president Jacob Zuma's Umkhonto weSizwe party but added that campaigns like the DA's weren't countered sufficiently and have had some impact on how the EFF is perceived.'I don't think it's based on any verifiable fact now, but it's a narrative that was built up over a course of time, I think since the inception of the EFF, because of the policies that we represent,' he remarked.And while deemed not fit enough to co-govern at national level, the EFF currently enjoys a relationship with the ANC across several metros, even in Gauteng.The irony being in 2016, it joined hands with the very same DA warning South Africans against them, in a bid to destroy the ANC.'We did that to weaken the ANC, and it is weakened now to a point where it can't recover… to work with them now is convenient for the EFF,' he said.'It's a shift of politics and I don't think to remain at the trough, but now we're included in those local government municipalities as well, and we're able to effectively leverage our work in local government to prove to voters that the EFF is capable to govern,' he added.
This is also a relationship that comes with its own tensions, Tambo himself, has accused the ANC of thinking it can lean on the EFF to come to the rescue when it's met with challenges in its partnership with the DA. The red berets mouthpiece said the ANC shouldn't presume it will always be on hand to support it, claiming the ANC has shown itself to be both manipulative and inconsistent in this regard.
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