Kris Van der Bijl

I watched The Clarion Call, a documentary made by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to showcase their political party in the build-up to the 2024 South African General Elections. 

The Clarion Call highlights the EFFs foundation as a youth organisation unhappy with the pace and direction of the policies of the African National Congress (ANC). 

Julius Malema, the EFFs commander-in-chief, made national headlines as the boisterous president of the ANC’s Youth League. According to the documentary, top ANC officials were unhappy with Malema’s radical ideas. Malema was expelled from the ANC at the end of 2012 alongside other members who would soon form the core of the EFF. 

Their breakaway is shown as painful. Malema talks about approaching his grandmother and telling her she must vote for his new party. The old party is implied as the ANC. He goes on to say, “What will the ancestors say? To have turned against that which you have known all your life? But you have no choice.” 

Notice how the calls of the past are shown as relevant to the concerns of the present. But, while they are acknowledged, they are not blindly followed. There’s the implication that the past cannot provide a means to build the free, genuinely democratic future that South African youths desire.

The statement is almost incomplete. Malema does not say how to turn against what people have known all their lives. He also does not say that it will be easy. Instead, he ends with the contradictory “but”. They have no choice but to vote for something different. What the difference means and how this turn against will come about is not explicit. 

Change becomes a necessary sublimation brought on by an as-yet-unnamed force. I’d argue that the difficulties of change are at the root of the EFF’s story. 

This is somewhat obvious. Opposition political parties must run on a platform of difference to the ruling party. But this difference should always be one of change. The system built by the leading party needs to be faulty, and the opposing party needs to show itself as capable of fixing the broken system. 

The Clarion Call provides numerous examples of faults with the current South African systems that are rooted in ANC politics. They mention the Marikana Massacre, Jacob Zuma’s blatant corruption (obviously with special mention of Nkandla), and their failure to build an economic reality where every citizen is truly free. 

Floyd Shivambu best summarises it when he says, “There is now a clarion call and demands for workers on the ground on what should be done differently.” It isn’t easy to unpack what exactly he means here or what difference they would bring. I’m more interested in the rhetoric of how the EFF places themselves as answering the strong call from the masses of South Africa to change the system. 

Rhetorics and politics go hand-in-hand, but the EFFs image centeredness marks the connection as distinct from other South African parties. They’re the party of red berets and wearing overalls in parliament as much as they are a party of change. 

Professor Raymond Suttner, a political analyst and scholar, notes that the party’s red “signifies the opening of a gap which [the EFF] wishes to fill.” The gap to him, and which The Clarion Call would agree, is the failings of the current ruling systems within South Africa. 

One EFF member takes this further. He suggests that the whole symbolism surrounding the party is more than shock value. It’s “not turning Parliament into a spectacle but illustrating that parliament is also a site of protest in the same way as a street is a site of protest.” 

The EFF’s aesthetic is always brought back to revolutionary images in part because they work so hard to remind South Africans of the change they possess. 

Andile Mngxitama of the Black First Land First Party connects this to Malema himself. He calls him a “master of spectacle and also symbolism. He understands the visual representation of politics…he has these gifts, but ideologically whether he is committed to the project of change, this I argue is highly debatable.” Why and how this is debatable is never expanded on. Mngxitama also calls him the Dalai Lama at one point, so I’m not sure how serious he is. 

The documentary kept harking back to this potential for change even as it suggested some of the party’s successes. As this is a South African political documentary, it had to mention #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall. And like all South African parties – but probably bar VF+ – they show pictures of party members in the strike. It’s also impossible to argue that members within the EFF disagree with what these movements represented. 

I just wonder how their image of change can ever be anything more than an ideal. Is it worth turning it into anything more than this? The EFF definitely brings value to the South African parliament and political sphere, if only as being the person in the room who keeps reminding everyone about the poor, predominantly black, working class in our country.

The EFF’s role within the system can be kept here. It’s what they’re good at. And if the recent elections are anything to go by, South Africans do not see them as a real option to run the country. 

The Clarion Call was part of their 2024 election campaign. Was it part of the reason why they lost votes? I think that the fundamental challenge with the image of the EFF is also what makes them so compelling and influential. They are ideal; the base of their political thought is a kind of utopian socialism that’s great to strive towards, if only to get nearer to the freedom it can provide. It’s a journey, not a destination. 

Towards the documentary’s end, a member asks us to “imagine a South Africa where no child walks on the street but the child [sic] is in a university lecture room.” A great image and a worthy ideal to move towards. I would be missing the point if I said that streets need to be walked on, too, or that university is not the goal of everyone in life. But I bring this up to show a specific feasibility that The Clarion Call lacks. 

It is, of course, made to show the EFF’s best side and does not need to answer the dull, bureaucratic questions on taxation and land reform. Yet the documentary to show their best side is indicative of an organisation of images, symbols, and ideals of change. At some point, they must do something, right? 

I remember watching the 2024 South African National Election results and seeing Julius Malema accept that his party lost votes. He did not suggest voter rigging or blame other forces. He took it remarkably well. I saw the face of a leader when he posted about this on X. I think the EFF PR team would grow the party’s support base a whole lot better by showing defeats alongside the ideals of victory and change. 

But I do lack political knowledge. If the goal of The Clarion Call was to unite EFF members and get them to vote, then it probably helped. Its clean camera work and the talking head style are hard to argue against. I’d like to see more political parties in South Africa make movies about their successes and their history. It’ll be a fun archive of people talking about how great they and their work are while we continue living.