On Sunday, 25 October 2015, two days after thousands of univer-On sity students march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria in protest against fee increases, I receive a flood of messages asking whether I am coming to Zandspruit. There is a rumour circulating that Julius Malema, the EFF’s controversial leader, would be speaking at a rally later that day. I arrive in Zandspruit at 2:00 p.m. to find a large crowd gathered around a red gazebo and a white bakkie, which is used as a platform, opposite the primary school (figure C.1). This is one of many EFF rallies that take place in informal settlements and townships across the province that weekend. The rallies seek to mobilise support for the party’s Economic Freedom March on 27 October. I stand with Sizwe and his neighbour Lucas, who is wearing one of the EFF’s signature red berets. Sizwe’s shack is only a few yards from the truck around which everyone has congregated. We have been waiting for over an hour when Malema finally arrives. As he gets out of the car and steps on to the back of the bakkie, the crowd erupts with raised fists and shouts of ‘Ju! Ju! Ju! Ju!’ Some residents have climbed on top of their shacks to get a glimpse of the commander-in-chief, as he is known. He begins his speech with a stinging indictment of the ruling ANC government. ‘There is no better life in Zandspruit,’ he declares, decrying that most residents in informal settlements are still living in shacks without reliable water and electricity 21 years after the end of apartheid. ‘It’s like [living in] a jail … You are not free,’ he proclaims.

After listing the pressing service delivery and infrastructural needs of the community, Malema turns to the failure of the post-1994 government to include the majority of the population in the economy in any meaningful way. ‘The ANC sold out black people,’ he states, accusing the ANC of protecting ‘white capital’ and betraying black aspirations. ‘How can you say you are free when you have no money?’ he asks. Hardly stopping to breathe, he turns his attention to the steep rise in the practice of labour brokering.