A week ago, the MK Party removed Floyd Shivambu as its secretary-general, citing as the reason his recent clandestine trip to Malawi to attend a church service led by Shepherd Bushiri, a fugitive preacher facing serious allegations. These include cases of rape, sexual exploitation and financial fraud in SA.
The former EFF deputy president, who has always styled himself as a revolutionary, was stripped of this assumed revolutionary credentials when he made the decision to not only associate with an alleged sexual predator, but to also abandon his long-standing ideological posture at the altar of personal interest.
Upon return from Malawi, Shivambu defiantly told South Africans that he would never apologise for his actions, even as the message that he was communicating to victims of Bushiri’s alleged crimes was that he is indifferent to their suffering.
In his signature arrogance, Shivambu stated in an interview with Newzroom Afrika: “I attended the Jesus Nation Church in Malawi because I wanted to listen to the sermon during the Easter weekend, and I don't think there was anything wrong with that. If the South African government is looking for Shepherd Bushiri, they know which processes to follow, and it doesn't have anything to do with Floyd”.
He went on to tell blatant lies, claiming that “there is no court ruling in Malawi within the criminal justice system that links both countries that has instructed that he must be deported to SA”, despite the Chief Resident magistrate court in Malawi granting SA’s extradition request for Bushiri and his wife, finding that they have cases to answer in SA. But such is the boundlessness of Shivambu’s arrogance.
Shivambu has always identified as a progressive activist. With him and EFF president, Julius Malema, at the helm, the party redefined radical intellectual politics in SA. In the party’s constitution, which Shivambu greatly influenced, it defines itself as an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-imperialist organisation rooted in democratic socialist values.
Shivambu himself has often stated that he draws inspiration from Marxism-Leninism, citing such revolutionaries and intellectuals as Frantz Fanon and Thomas Sankara as his greatest inspirations. But Fanon and Sankara’s appreciation of the place of religion in the liberation struggle did not extend to the exploitive tactics of such persons as Bushiri.
While both Sankara and Fanon acknowledged the role of religion in narratives of the sacred that could motivate the colonised to resist oppression and reclaim their identity, they were unambiguous in the argument that the church established a system of political oppression within colonised lands, and that colonisation and evangelisation worked hand-in-hand.
Nothing about belief in “prophets” the likes of Bushiri is reflective of Marxism-Leninism or African nationalism. Indeed, Shivambu’s association with the alleged sexual predator, a man who built his multi-million-dollar fortune on the backs of desperate and poor Black people, is an affront to the socialist values that Shivambu so eloquently speaks of and claims to champion.
As one Zamikhaya Maseti so eloquently describes Shivambu’s ill-advised trip to Malawi, “it was not just poor judgment, it was a violation of public morality”.
And indeed, in a country where over 13,000 sexual crimes were reported between January and March 2025, and where between R16bn and R64bn that could improve the lives of our people is lost to money laundering annually, for a political leader to associate with a man accused of sexual crimes and money laundering, even without him being convicted, is to violate public morality and to spit in the faces of the oppressed.
There is nothing revolutionary about this and the only thing revolutionary about Shivambu is his eloquent talk about revolution.
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