South Africa: EFF’s brooding iconoclast defects to MK

The Twitter bio of Floyd Nyiko Shivambu says it all: “Believes in Dialectical Materialism & Labour Theory of Value. Heterodox.”

It doesn’t exactly sell the man as someone you’d want to have a beer with after a hard day’s work, but it captures something fundamental about the politician. Of the EFF’s most prominent troika – Julius Malema, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi and Floyd Shivambu – Shivambu has always been the serious one.