Men with AK-47s; the gentle grounds of Free State University pocked with gunfire; decapitated heads on pikes; blood-drunk cannibals running naked through the quad: Julius Malema claims that this is what everyone wants to see. It’s the EFF’s first ever National People’s Assembly in Bloemfontein, and he believes that the If-It-Bleed-It-Leads crew is hoping to broadcast nothing more than Fighters reducing the university to a Saw movie set. “Juicy, juicy,” says Malema, during the media briefing, shaking his shoulders mock lasciviously.

It’s been a long year for the Commander in Chief, just as it’s been a long a year for those of us following him. He kicked off 2014 with an expert piece of political theatre: the EFF built a premium RDP house for a family living on land in sight of Nkandla, the world’s first presidential compound to look like a mid-range safari camp. He has ended the year by handing over his title as Commander in Chief to EFF delegates from around the country, who today will decide on his status within the organisation’s top six. (Spoiler alert: not remotely in doubt.) In between, he solicited a million or so votes from the general population, ushered 25 Fighters into national parliament, and promptly destroyed South African politics as we know it.

But this assembly, he insists, is a story-free zone. “I am everywhere, I know everything that is happening,” Malema assures us, Vader-like. “Stop looking for negativity.”

Hell no! This is South Africa, the world capital of hysterical pessimism, and no story must be allowed to be an un-story. So I’m forced to mention the standard issue mayhem at registration on Saturday afternoon, in which members of the media and Fighters—all standing under a Free State sun so blunt and raging that one couldn’t help composing Voortrekker-era poetry in one’s head—rushed the gates in order to fetch a badge hanging from a lanyard. There were great miasmic waves of grumpiness, but nothing more. The story, I immediately thought, was the absence of story.

But that would be an untruth. For this Assembly is the official consummation of the relationship between an unlikely political party and its unlikely members. Conferences like this one—where elected delegates from across the country are bussed in to vote on national and provincial leadership positions—are the magical elixir that turns performance art projects into legitimate political entities. By all rights, the assembly should be a gong show—if bar mitzvahs can go horribly wrong, it stands to reason that political events can turn catastrophic, especially when power is within sniffing distance. There were in the last several months a number of disruptions as EFF caucus meetings, most notably in the Northern Cape. Fighters sustained injuries, while the Eastern Cape and Gauteng caucuses suffered from general unhappiness. Trouble was surely in the offing.

And yet, none of that was evident on the morning of the electoral conference. The Free State campus was quiet, the air carrying the scent of blossoms and cut grass. Fighters streamed quietly toward the Callie Human auditorium. Man, was it young here! Nothing emphasizes the fact that the EFF is essentially a calved-off ANC Youth League more being around the EFF. And wasn’t Bloemfontein, or rather Mangaung, where the ANC finally divested itself of Julius Malema, burying him in his political grave? Ah, the dramatic circle, the arc, the Shakespearean comeuppance. And while the ANC’s Mangaung 2012 was lousy with late model Range Rovers and Mercedes parked up and down Second Street, Comrades blitzed on power, the streets at night this time are dead quiet. Discipline, Fighters!

The story is no story.

Sure, there was some dancing and singing, observed by bemused Free State University staff. There were Fighters in red overalls, black flak jackets and black helmets standing sentry above the delegates getting wanded down by even more Riot Fighters. But inside the auditorium, it was all hugging, the political equivalent of a hippy commune. And while that isn’t precisely correct—there were some tense huddled discussions taking place amongst ashen-faced, under-slept delegates—for the most part, it was all very well run.

After about 2,000 delegates were ushered into the hall, the conference kicked off with national spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi engaging in one of his now famous sing-alongs. Then Dali Mpofu, followed by Floyd Shivambu. And then the CiC was rushed in by his security detail, wearing red overalls straining at the hips and an exquisite pair of midnight purple loafers. Once the Malema was seated and the screaming had died down, Shivambu opened the conference by calling up a pastor, an imam and a Rastafarian. (What, no rabbi?). “We are calling on the EFF, legalize marijuana!” exclaimed the Rasta. There was no disagreement from the crowd. Following this, Julius Sello Malema took to the podium with a brick of paperwork.

Most of the time, Malema speaks off the cuff. This time, there was strict agenda. This was a “political report”, and it functioned as a simultaneous work of history, political science, historiography, epistemology, and general denigration of Blade Nzimande. It began with a definition of “the people”—the working class, underemployed and unemployed members of South African society, those “who live like pigs in congested squatter camps with no clean water, no electricity, no houses and no sanitation,” for whom the EFF was apparently created.

Next, Malema defined the terms “power” and “economy”, both of which “if controlled and largely owned by the people, can put bread and salt on the table of each and every South African.” Then, the CiC delivered a history of the EFF. He derided the “staff riders”—those same anarchic, vulpine, self-serving disruptive elements who would have delivered me a story if there was a story to deliver—that they would not be accommodated. “Just try,” he warned them, “so that you become a practical example of how we deal with anarchy.”

This was a big speech, a long speech—not Kenneth Kaunda 9-hours-long, but long enough to take care of business, hammering out as it did every last point, position and precept articulated by the party in its short but eventful history. It staked a claim as a Marxist-Leninist Fanonist ideological entity, created to oppose “white minority capital and its representatives, the DA and the ANC.” It was internationalist, pan-Africanist, nationalist, and committed to nationalizing every last rivet, t-shirt and diamond in the country. Sweating his way through this summary, Malema was not “Juju” but tick-tock efficient medium, delivering his party’s platform with zero bluster. Until, of course, he wrapped up the speech, and danced around in those gorgeous loafers.

“So those who love politics,” says Malema, in his media briefing, “you should be the happiest. All of you got the shock of your life at the opening. A perfect opening. A superb opening.” Oh, sure, he gets a bit hot under the collar when he talks about Cyril Ramaphosa—“a criminal of note!”—but as the leader of a revolutionary party, he is behaving terribly Zen. Only one reporter gets labeled an agent in an EFF media briefing? Get rid of Dali Mpofu, bring in the Dali Lama.

The conference is, of course, young. Much can happen. Stakes are high—as the party nudges closer to power, those in the running will get edgy. It’s a young party, in every way. And yet, every time Julius Malema is expected to take one of the universe’s pies in the face, he dodges it deftly.

“You’re looking for things,” he warns us. “There’s nothing.” He should’ve dropped the mic and walked out. Instead, he offered a beatific smile and left with a wave. DM

Photo: Julius Malema addressed the EFF delegates on Sunday (Greg Nicolson).

Read more:

• Read Malema’s entire speech here.