The recent high-level resignations from the EFF demonstrate the consequences of mismanaging a political party. They also show what can happen when a party loses votes and momentum in an election. All of this contains lessons for other political parties about why party members need to know they could one day be a leader, why it's bad policy to accept defectors and what happens if a party is centred on one personality.

The last six months have shown how much can change for one political party in a very short space of time.

In April, some still thought Julius Malema could be the deputy president of South Africa through a coalition with the ANC.

Instead, he now has less support than he received in 2019, less influence and fewer leaders on whom he can rely.

His deputy, Floyd Shivambu, has defected to MK, Mzwanele Manyi has gone there too, former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane resigned to "rest" and then joined MK, and Fana Mokoena has left both his parliamentary seat and the party for no publicly stated reason.

While it is tempting to blame the rise of MK for this, the truth is that the seeds of some of these developments were sown some time ago.

First, this is a lesson on why accepting high-profile people and then allowing them to jump the queue into representative positions (and parliamentary seats) was always going to be damaging in the long run.

In almost every case, such a person seeking a position as an MP cannot be...