Durban — Political analyst Professor Susan Booysen said she did not believe that the EFF’s performance in next year’s elections would be affected by its decision to expel members who failed to bring buses to the party’s 10th anniversary in July. Booysen was reacting to the announcement by the party’s former KwaZulu-Natal chairperson Vusi Khoza that he had joined a new party.
Khoza who was also an EFF member of parliament but was expelled after failing to organise buses to the party’s 10th-year anniversary was formally introduced as a new member of the Afrika Unite Congress (AUC), on Wednesday.
AUC is a new party that has been recently founded by former magistrate Lizwi Ncwane who is secretary of the Nazareth Baptist Church (Ebuhleni faction). The church is widely known as Shembe because of the hereditary leadership position that is always reserved for the Shembe family. Currently, the faction is led by Mduduzi Shembe.
Introducing Khoza in a media briefing, Ncwane said it was a blessing to have a member of his calibre and immediately tasked him to hit the ground running crisscrossing the province and country canvas sing new members.
Booysen said it would be difficult for Khoza and other members who had left the EFF, to compete with it. She said the EFF was a strong force in South African politics and had been on an upward trajectory in every election.
She also backed the party’s decision to ask members to contribute to bringing supporters to the stadium, arguing that if the party did not use that strategy, the FNB stadium was not going to be packed like it was.
“As much they were harsh in dismissing those who failed to bring buses their strategy worked very well and those images of the packed FNB would assist the party in swaying voters to it in the next year’s elections, adding that many people would be influenced by those images and vote for the party,” said Booysen.
Ncwane said the party believed in Khoza’s ability to garner support ahead of the elections, adding that the party would not need him to bring any bus to the party rallies because it was not his responsibility to do that. Ncwane said his party expected people to come to the party not because of any promises, so they would burden members to pay for the buses for the people to come to its rallies.
In his membership acceptance speech, Khoza joked he was happy that in the tasks assigned to him by the party leadership, organising buses was not one of them. In a veiled reference to the EFF, Khoza said he had left a politics of hooliganism and had joined politics of dignity and order. He vowed to work hard for the party to ensure it did well in the elections.
“What inspired me to choose this party over 15 or more that were courting him to join them was that it was built on African nationalism and African spirituality. We must do away with following foreigners’ ideologies like Karl Marx’s whereas we have our African forefathers like Julius Nyerere, Robert Sobukwe, and many others,” said Khoza.
EFF chairperson in KwaZulu-Natal Mongezi Thwala said the party was bigger than individuals, therefore he was not worried about any member leaving for other parties.
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