Hello! I’m a new communist from South Africa, and so I would like to ask this community’s thoughts on the Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF). After doing some (admittedly inadequate) investigation on them, they look… not good.
However, coming from a white, upper-middle class background, I’ve been lead to believe that the EFF are crazy extremists intent on white genocide, so my negative view of them might be due to those biases. After all. I now know that slander against communists is often completely made up or exaggerated.
On the other hand, genocidal fascists have called themselves socialist/communist in the past (e.g. Nazis, Khmer Rouge), so the EFF doesn’t get a free pass just because they use revolutionary lingo.
My sources for this post are mostly Wikipedia (which I know isn’t a great source), the EFF’s website, and googling specific questions I came up with. So anyone with better info please correct me where I’m wrong.
In favor of the EFF:
- They seem to have a good take on most issues, e.g. China, Russian war, Palestine, redistributing land etc.
Against the EFF:
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The land redistribution they propose would be based on race, rather than, say, amount of land owned. I can’t see a way https://www.npr.org/2010/03/10/124458077/south-african-officials-luxe-lifestyle-raises-doubts for examples. Furthermore, he seems to be the director of multiple companies. I’m aware that the media often make up figures about socialist leaders having absurd sums of money (e.g. saying Xi has billions of dollars in personal wealth), but these articles are from before he formed a socialist party, and was still part of the ruling ANC.where it’s more justified for a small time white farmer to lose their land rather than a farm corporation owned by a black person.
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Julius Malema, the party’s president, seems to use his positions for extensive personal gain. See https://www.news24.com/News24/Malema-misses-R3m-20100223 https://www.npr.org/2010/03/10/124458077/south-african-officials-luxe-lifestyle-raises-doubts for examples. Furthermore, he seems to be the director of multiple companies. I’m aware that the media often make up figures about socialist leaders having absurd sums of money (e.g. saying Xi has billions of dollars in personal wealth), but these articles are from before he formed a socialist party, and was still part of the ruling ANC.
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The EFF is racist (mostly against white people). They often sing the song ‘Kill the Boer’. ‘Boer’ here directly translates to farmer, but is generally understood in South Africa to refer to white Afrikaans people. Now, socialist slogans often exaggerate or are said as a joke, but I don’t think I buy that that’s the case here. Malema has, for example, also said “I’m saying to you, we’ve not called for the killing of white people, at least for now. I can’t guarantee the future.” Malema has also made anti-Indian remarks. Also, I’ve been lead to believe that the EFF only accepts black members, but looking at their membership sign-up page, that might not be the case. On the other hand, looking at their membership page, I can see where people got that impression. EDIT TO ADD: Surely, trying to unify the workers of all races is a more correct position than sowing this kind of ethnic division (which is, after all, a common fascist tactic)?
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Lastly, they just don’t seem very effective. Like, it all seems very performative. Scrolling through their website, I see a lot of statements about slogans, theatrics in parliament and rallies, but not much about actual stuff they’ve done. For example, googling ‘eff soup kitchen’ only brings up one relevant result, from 2018, about one soup kitchen they’ve helped. Looking up ‘eff homeless shelters’ brings up no relevant articles. Their website barely has any reference to any positive things they’ve done in regions where they’ve gained power. Is that normal for a socialist party that they don’t talk about doing that kind of stuff? Or is it normal for parties to not take part in that kind of stuff (maybe just directing members to other dedicated org)? Or is the EFF just useless?
Once again, I’m aware of my own biases, so I’d like someone more knowledgeable than me to chime in.
So, is the EFF worth supporting? If not, can someone recommend a better org in SA to support?
My brother in christ, u just racist. White people are in the EFF and are the most advanced settler communists there because they are by necessity class suicidal and subjegate themselves to the indigenous black population who has always stewarted the land before settlers came and brought capitalism. Decolonizing is a necessity and with race as class even in a fully marxist framework we can see how expropriation of land based on race is a necessity.
I’ll keep it short because kaffe made a great post there, but this is an idealogical failure on your part. As with any settler colonial state the vanguard is always going to come from those not allowed within the settler identity and will always be some form of decolonization. I will have one more note
I generally find the best definition of fascism to mean colonialism turned inwards, so the jews being subjected to the violence normally reserved for africans, or the circumstances that settlers pose on the indigenous or enslaved in their settler colonies. The EFF recognizes this and wants to fix this, society is already drawn against racial lines with black people receiving fascism while white people live in luxury at their expense. To suggest they are the fascists in turn, especially as a white person, well… the settler communist isn’t far from the white supremacist tree. Hope the tough love helps, if not rest assured the EFF will see us a socialist south africa in our lifetimes.
Sorry about that, I’ve only been exposed to this kind of theory for a couple of months so far. That’s why I asked on here, to get a better understanding 😅. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few more questions. Like I said to Kaffe, I’m not trying to be contrarian, just trying to understand.
I’ll just copy what I said to Kaffe: 30 years ago, race as class was definitely a thing, enforced by the state, but now? Am I supposed to believe that a white person living on the streets is of a ‘higher class’ than a black billionaire? Granted, it’s much, much more common for black people to live on the street, and for whites to be billionaires, but the reverse situation does exist, so why use race as proxy for class at all? I understand the need for intersectionality in socialist movements, but this seems to work against that, increasing tension and giving fuel for reactionaries rather than creating solidarity.
I’ve seen a lot of definitions of fascism, including this one, and I don’t think I agree with this one. It seems to imply that only colonial countries can be fascist. Would Pinochet’s Chile, or South Korea during the sixties and seventies not count as fascist then? These fascists were supported by the US, but it was still Chileans or South Koreans in the end doing the actual oppressing. Being oppressed doesn’t prevent someone from being a reactionary or a fascist, after all. That’s why I also asked about things like anti-Indian racism, and Malema’s business ties
I genuinely do want to believe this, I hope you understand my concerns
Race as class is important because of the systems that kept these seperations as rigid as they were may not exist anymore, but the capitalists were never actually going to end apartheid. As was the case in America, the ending of slavery was because otherwise black people would flip the countty on its head otherwise, same with the “end” of jim crow, remove the most obvious forms of discrimination, pay off a few black people to become white supremacists, and say that racism is over. We need to remember race is a construct formed out of and to reinforce the white supremacist system, a black billionaire has a white mind and the enemy stays the same – capitalist colonialism and its super structure of white supremacy.
With the example of Pinochet’s Chile and South Korea’s fascism, this is out of their neo-colonial status and functions as fascism because it is the open violence of colonialism and complete subjegation to capitalism and the white supremacist world order. Generally in the 21st century colonialism has progressed to neo-colonialism, indoctrinating a subsect of the population into anti-communist idealogy and having them enact fascism on the population as to clean imperialism’s hand of the situation. But at the end of the day, the driving force is always capital and particularly US imperialist capital and the white supremacist order it reinforces, it is still US fascism to blame as the situation simply would not have occured otherwise.
The EFF just doesn’t fit any definition of fascism I can think of. They certainly don’t represent corporations looking to take full control of the state (Mussolini’s “Fascism might be better called corporatism”). They aren’t funded by US imperialism or any other substancial anti-communist force, nor do they partake in anti-communism. They don’t want to use white people as a permanent underclass of laborers and displace them from their native lands (nor could they even do these if they wanted), and they’d still deserve support even if they decided to take a more radical approach.
Decolonization often gets called fascist by the white people it threatens, but lets stop for a moment and look at Palestine and really ask ourselves – is there any other choice? Israelis live their lives in a relative comfort on the backs of Palestinians, and so can any Israeli “working class” really have a revolutionary class conciousness without being class suicidal? Can a revolutionary idealogy be anything but removing this explotative relationship and effectively decolonizing the lands?