Former Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) deputy president Floyd Shivambu says majority of leaders knew that he was leaving to join uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party.
Shivambu ditched the EFF he co-founded with Julius Malema in 2013, on 15 August and has since been appointed as national convenor.
FLOYD SHIVAMBU WEIGHS IN ON HIS DEPARTURE FROM THE EFF
In an interview on Sizwe Mpofu Walsh’s podcast, Shivambu revealed that Malema was not aware that he was planning quit the party.
“The majority of the leaders of the EFF knew that I was going to join the MK Party. Some came back to me and said ‘please don’t tell the president’ because the president did not know and I did not see the need to talk to him about it,” he said.
“Some of those leaders pretended to cry during the meeting pretending they did not know my resignation. It was a properly canvassed view, it was not a view that happened overnight,” he added.
Defending his decision to ditch the party he co-founded, Floyd Shivambu said his decision to leave EFF and Malema was not personal but was more of a bold move.
“I had to take a bold, possibly a good decision to leave the EFF which I played a central role in. It’s not a secret that I conceptualised the Economic Freedom Fighters, had the name, commander in chief, the seven cardinal pillars, the founding manifesto and all its key documents,” he said.
WERE THE TWO REALLY FRIENDS?
During the interview, Shivambu reiterated that his relationship with Malema was only political and the fact that they worked together in the same spaces didn’t mean the relationship was personal.
When Floyd Shivambu announced his resignation, Malema said the party’s constitution does not allow members who have resigned to join other parties to return to the EFF. However, Shivambu could return to the Red Berets should he wish to do so because he is not just a comrade but his dear and because he co-founded the EFF.
“The day you decide to come back, you are more than welcome,” he said.
Malema later walked back this statement, telling the SABC News recently that his fellow party leaders rein him in, and that the door for Shivambu’s return was closed forever.
DO YOU THINK FLOYD SHIVAMBU WOULD WOULD STILL BE A MEMBER OF THE MK PARTY IN FIVE YEARS TIME?
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