A member of the South African Economic Freedom Fighters, EFF, leaves Parliament after they disrupted the official opening session in Cape Town, South Africa, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015. South African President Jacob Zuma will deliver the State of the Nation Address after the opening session of the South African Parliament. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, Pool)
(Mail & Guardian) – With the shenanigans of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) last night in Parliament, the ANC had the nation behind it even before the State of the Nation Address (Sona) began.
The ANC (which I must confess I am a supporter of, for purposes of full disclosure) had already won before the proceedings even began. But it made several rookie errors. It succumbed to emotionalism as opposed to cold and calculated rationalism.
Here are the things we knew going in to Sona, that the EFF:
was going to disrupt the proceedings;
would want to create an atmosphere where they would be thrown out, creating chaos in the house;
would want to be thrown out by force on national television;
would ask questions they were not supposed to ask at that point in time; and
would provoke whoever tried to force them out of the house in order to make sure that there is violence, thus proving that the ruling party is undemocratic.
The above are all predictable and should have been anticipated and countered in a rational manner.
