The EFF has announced that it will not co-govern with any party, and has decided to support opposition parties to form municipal governments in hung councils.

This is the best decision the party has taken. The EFF will not be bound by what the DA does as a minority government in places like Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane, Johannesburg and others.

This decision takes into account the conflicted feelings of a typical EFF voter, who is extremely unhappy with the ANC and who, simultaneously, cannot bring himself to a partnership with what he perceives to be a white party - the DA.

Thus, the EFF sits in the powerful position where it can shoot down proposed decisions from the DA government, and can occasionally support those it deems favourable to its constituency.

This means that the DA will not do as it likes, and the EFF will always have bargaining power. In order to smooth its way, the only option the DA has will be to deliver quality services to citizens, which can only be good for voters.

The EFF's decision is strategic. The party is looking at the 2019 national elections. It wants the DA to deliver so that the ANC can be removed from power, thus giving rise to a possible DA minority government at a national level, which would give the EFF bargaining power.

In the end, the EFF hopes eventually to overtake the DA as a majority party in the country when the ANC is finally gone. That the ANC will disappear is now obvious to most thinking people.

But, then, what must the EFF do to prepare itself for the future?

Our starting point is the same: Julius Malema's party is not yet ready to govern SA. If the EFF were to be called upon to constitute a government after the 2019 elections, can you imagine Malema as president? How many of those who surround him are ministerial material?

The truth is that both Malema and his fellow fighters are not yet ready to govern, which is why they are not rushing for power.

It must be stated, though, that as a collective, the national leaders of the EFF are intellectually superior to their counterparts in the DA and the ANC.

The president of the ANC Youth League embodies the hopelessness of the ANC's future. The chap is a dunderhead.

If the DA does not act quickly, it will not have black leaders who are as solid as those in the EFF, and thus the DA wouldn't be able to remove the white cloud hanging over its head.

This does not mean that the EFF has already won the race for the future. Other than the small band of its national leaders, the party does not have a convincing pool of national leaders to govern South Africa.

The EFF must therefore intensify its recruitment, targeting mature clever blacks across the country. Currently the EFF is relatively strong nationally, and very weak locally. This is a gap the party must work urgently to close.

The EFF too needs to do some serious ideological soul-searching. Socialist parties all over the world are not mass movements.

Lenin's "better fewer, but better" axiom has shaped the character of most socialist parties. Where this has not happened - such as in China and, ironically, in the Soviet Union - the result has been a dictatorship of the few over the many.

That kind of situation is unimaginable in our country. South Africans are too democratic to subject themselves to a small band of anachronistic communists.

Furthermore, the EFF is grossly mistaken to think that the majority of black people hate whites.

Black South Africans have rejected the PAC and other black consciousness parties precisely because they don't believe in the artificial purism of the extremist version of African nationalism.

Even as they abhor racism, most black people believe that the future of SA lies in a genuine working together between blacks and whites.

The other bitter truth is that, generally, blacks regard the lifestyle of white people as a symbol of success - German cars, Italian suits, Western houses, the English language, etc.

If the EFF were to continue along its anti-white line, it would forever remain a noisy black consciousness party that cannot be trusted to form an inclusive and mature government.

This means that, in addition to diluting, if not dumping, its socialist rhetoric completely, the EFF will also need to shed its anti-white streak. It shall not work for a party hoping to govern SA.

These are not tough choices for the EFF to make; they will require maturity among its national leaders.

As they ponder the future, EFF leaders must not forget that ideas don't create reality; ideas arise out of reality. This cardinal dictum necessarily demands the flexibility of mind.