ABSTRACT
Chapter 12 draws on a performative understanding of populism to analyze the militant Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa. Since its establishment by Julius Malema in 2013, this party has thoroughly transformed the country’s political landscape. While many commentators have dismissed the EFF as “a case of hype over substance”, it has challenged the post-Apartheid democratic settlement and increasingly sets the agenda of South African national politics. Through disruptive political engagement in parliament and clever use of the courts, the EFF has placed corruption within the ANC (specifically relating to former president Jacob Zuma) firmly on the national agenda. It has also revived debates over land reform and over racial inequalities in economic ownership that still resonate in South Africa twenty-three years after the formal end of Apartheid. The EFF’s politics of spectacle has included dressing as maids and mineworkers in parliament, like “the people”, and refusing to acknowledge President Zuma. These populist performative practices have redefined acceptable conduct in South African politics. The ANC, in reaction, is now increasingly deploying a left-populist rhetoric of “radical economic transformation” and “white monopoly capital” to reassert its hegemony as the “true” representative of black South Africans.
