The EFF’s National Shutdown on Monday was a political failure and, if anything, argues Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, would end up strengthening the ANC and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s hand if it is ever repeated. Who would have thought a politician normally as tactically astute as Julius Malema could be so easily thwarted? The truth may be though that South Africans are not easily roused to revolution. In our history the hardest battles have been fought to retain power or privilege, not to gain them. “Casting yourself as a champion of the poor limits you to that fraction of poor people who have given up believing they can do things for themselves,” says Bruce.