By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Julius Malema has reassigned the party responsibilities that were held by Floyd Shivambu to his office after his former second-in-command’s deflection to MK party.
Malema said Sinawo Thambo would replace Shivambu in Parliament, while secretary general Marshall Dlamini would be the party’s chief whip in parliament.
His office will be responsible for the party’s governance task unit. The unit comprises all the EFF’s leaders of provincial legislatures, municipality councils and parliament whippery, and is responsible for all governance work in the EFF.
The party’s commander-in-chief was addressing its Gauteng Provincial Ground Forces Forum at Orlando Community Hall in Soweto on Monday evening.
Malema said anyone who was too ashamed to defend the organisation or traded loyalty for personal gain should leave.
“Leave now. It is very painful to count the soldiers you do not have…. I am the one who was prepared to step aside [at GNU negotiations] to say Floyd Shivambu must be minister of finance. Today I am the one who went around seeking positions [to fill],” said Malema.
He did not pull punches, telling members they needed to be held to the standard of the party’s constitution and follow it by rote. Provincial and regional structures needed to be better, he said while reading parts of the constitution to the hundreds of supporters and dozens of provincial and regional leaders.
He said those who left the party had never raised issues before abandoning it. In fact, he said that after his wife, Shivambu was the next closest person to him, and what he had done was cowardly.
Malema said that the organisation will remain alive, despite losing some of its integral members to the MK Party.
He said that those who left the party after the EFF’s electoral decline were only interested in political influence and personal gains.
“Many of them are opportunistic because they want to see whether they will emerge in the upcoming People’s Assembly before they decided whether they will remain in the EFF or not.”
He added that it was painful to think that they had enough soldiers to go to war but only to discover that those soldiers are no longer going to war with them.
EFF became a big loser in the 2024 elections after declining from 44 seats in the National Assembly to 38. The EFF was knocked from its position as the third largest party, gained in 2019, by MK Party.