Last week, a sea of red jumpsuits surfaced in Johannesburg. Nearly 300 supporters of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)—a self-declared Marxist-Leninist political party that has formed in opposition to the dominant African National Congress (ANC), and adopted red overalls as its uniform—gathered at the legislative building of South Africa’s Gauteng province. They were there to protest the expulsion of eight EFF members of the provincial legislature who were expelled from the building on July 1 for wearing the party uniform.
The EFF’s overalls are, in and of themselves, a radical political statement. According to party rhetoric, the jumpsuits are meant to express solidarity with the country’s domestic workers and manual laborers. Their red color represents a connection not only to communist parties past, but also to the blood of laborers, including 34 platinum miners who were massacred by police in Marikana in 2012, at the very site where the EFF announced its formation one year ago.
