Last year it started with an attack on mannequins. It ended with the throwing of toys in cell phone outlets.
Both series of incidents occurred in high-end shopping malls, targeted international brands, resulted in some of the stores being trashed, looted, staff traumatised and both brand’s stores closed nationally for several days. The reason? Fighting racism. Allegedly.
The first was sparked by the words, “coolest monkey in a jungle” on the hoodie of a black child in an H&M online shopping catalogue.
The second by the words, “abusers of freedom” on a PowerPoint slide at the Vodacom Journalism of the Year Awards showing the faces of EFF commander in chief (CIC) Julius Malema and chief whip Floyd Shivambu.
Malema had justified the “protest” action at H&M with “nobody is allowed to use skin colour to humiliate people.
“Any business or person that supports racism must know that we are coming for them.
“This is the year we are going to fight racism head-on ... we are black and proud, black and beautiful and we are not ashamed of being black. Educated people do not tolerate racism or discrimination.”
Days after the Vodacom “protests”, the EFF and Vodacom issued a joint statement claiming to have discussed the matter in detail, that both “encourage the right of freedom of speech and the free circulation of ideas” and that both, “… appreciate that the matter could have been handled differently to avoid the misunderstanding that occurred”.
How did we get to the point whereby fighting racism results in “misunderstandings” that give rise to looting and the traumatising of retail workers?
Is the trashing of shopping mall stores built for the convenience of the rich justified?
When the fighters for the black poor storm the castles of consumer capitalism, the bastions of “white monopoly capital”, how should the ordinary South African respond?
Many considered Vodacom spineless. DA leader Mmusi Maimane declared that, “if democracy means no consequence or accountability, it loses its own meaning. I will not do business with Vodacom”.
Vodacom, however, seems to have managed without Mr Maimane’s business. Similarly the EFF protest closed it doors only temporarily. Their stores remain open, profits roll in.
Many have described the EFF as “thugs” or similar.
Their actions certainly remind one of the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging’s (AWB) own “protests”.
Who will forget the AWB crashing their Viper armoured vehicle through the glass frontage of the World Trade Centre in June 1993?
In that instance, led by Eugene Terre’Blanche, armed AWB members beat up severely under-prepared SAPS members and stormed the multi-party negotiation chamber, assaulting several delegates and staff in the process.
It’s a tempting comparison, but there are differences. Malema and the national EFF leadership didn’t lead the protests.
The action appeared more opportunistic than intentional, and while the EFF branding was clear to all, in both instances the leadership were scrambling post-event to claim the credit without accepting responsibility.
Trashing a mall store certainly isn’t what was envisaged in our Constitution’s enshrining free speech and the right to protest. But does wearing a Tshirt a political activist make?
The EFF clearly aren’t in any way ready to govern. They avoid positions of responsibility like the plague. Their internal organising appears to be a bit fluid, shambolic even – they’re unable to pay taxi service providers, there is a sexual harassment charge here, a councillor held for theft there.
And then being underwritten by a self-confessed tobacco smuggler doesn’t exactly ring the integrity bell.
But writing the EFF off as buffoons, dismissing their borderline racism and attacks on journalists as the roughhouse antics of a shadow ANC Youth League, misses the point.
And explains why they’re likely to gain votes in 2019. The EFF is not so much a political movement as the self-styled guardians of the black ego.
And it guards black identity in two ways: it embodies black excellence, thus the fine dining, German luxury cars and expensive styling on display by the leadership. The message is clear, black man you are worthy – even if only by proxy.
The other tactic is to vigorously attack any perceived slight on blackness.
Thus the “coconut”, “clever blacks”, “blacks for rent” and “house negroes” slurs directed at black politicians within the ranks of the DA and ANC that are deemed “sell-outs”. In similar vein EFF recently lashed out at the “white man’s president” Johan Rupert, describing him as “an arrogant white Afrikaner who sees nothing beyond his selfish racist white interests”.
Claiming to be Rupert’s “nightmare”, EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi threatened that “no-one who protects and speaks in the interest of white privilege must ever sleep peacefully as long as EFF exists”.
Quoting Steve Biko, Ndlozi struck home, “black man you are on your own”.
Biko himself was clear that black consciousness was “attitude of mind and a way of life” whereby the black man rallied together with his brothers to overcome the cause of their oppression, “the blackness of their skin”. Blacks had to overcome “the psychological feeling of inferiority”.
But Biko envisaged a completely non-racial egalitarian society, in which “there shall be no minority, no majority, just people”. He understood the challenge.
In response to a question about whether blacks could get beyond giving vent to feelings of revenge, Biko responded “in the same way that they’ve (blacks) always lived in a racially divided society, they’ve got to learn to live in a non-racial society. They’ve got many things to learn”.
Is the black man alone? Is the psychological burden of overcoming inferiority only for blacks to carry?
Or is every South African called upon by black consciousness to learn how to live in a non-racial society?
The Clifton beach curtain call on 2018 suggests Biko was right – we all have many things to learn. We should take care that in haste to decry the EFF, we don’t blind ourselves to our own learning.