The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is 10 years old and is now the third-largest party in Parliament, after the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA). With growing support in every election so far, the EFF has captured many former supporters of the ANC Youth League who now follow Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu and Mbuyiseni Ndlozi.

Could the EFF be the exception to the lack of success of previous offshoots from the ANC?

In 1959, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) was formed by former members of the ANC Youth League under the charismatic leader Robert Sobukwe. They felt that ANC had deviated from the programme of action propounded by ANC leader Anton Lembede in 1949. PAC founders were against the preamble of the Freedom Charter, issued in 1955, which stated, "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white."

From 1959, the PAC was the second-biggest political party in South Africa for black people and was more popular on the African continent than the ANC, which was assumed to be controlled by white communists.

The PAC was also thought to be the more authentic African organisation because of its standpoint on the land issue. PAC policy was for land to be given back to black Africans, whereas the ANC's Freedom Charter said South Africa belongs to all those who live in it. The founders of the PAC were fundamentally opposed to this.

The arrests of PAC leaders including Sobukwe paralysed the organisation and it could no longer function efficiently. But the PAC continued...