The atomisation of black consciousness in South Africa

THE mercurial political odyssey of Floyd Shivambu - from ANC Youth League firebrand to EFF co-founder, MK Party secretary-general, and now prospective party founder - represents a microcosm of the broader crisis afflicting black political consciousness in post-apartheid South Africa.

- ANDA MBIKWANA

This analysis examines the profound implications of Shivambu's serial political migrations, arguing that his trajectory embodies a dangerous trend toward the commodification of black solidarity and the emergence of a technocratic middle-class politics that fundamentally undermines the emancipatory project of black unity.

Shivambu's recent announcement of consultations to form a new political party, merely 10 months after joining the MK Party, marks the culmination of a pattern of political nomadism that reflects deeper structural contradictions within South Africa's liberation discourse. Far from representing ideological evolution or strategic repositioning, Shivambu's movements reveal the emergence of a new class of political entrepreneurs who weaponise revolutionary rhetoric while fundamentally serving bourgeois interests.

Shivambu's political peregrinations find historical resonance in the phenomenon of what Antonio Gramsci termed "transformismo" - the co-optation of potentially revolutionary elements into the existing hegemonic structure. His formal resignation from the EFF in August 2024 to join Jacob Zuma's MK Party, expressing a commitment to "genuine revolutionary politics," exemplifies this process of ideological shapeshifting.

The pattern bears striking similarities to the political trajectories of figures like Bantu Holomisa, whose movement from the ANC to the United Democratic Movement (UDM) in 1997, or more recently, Mmusi Maimane's exit from the DA to establish the One South Africa Movement. Each case demonstrates how individual ambition, cloaked in the language of principled departure, contributes to the fragmentation of coherent political alternatives.