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Formerly part of the Congress of the People (Cope) revolution that wasn’t, the new communications manager of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is a fan of Nelson Mandela Bay Metro Municipality Mayor Athol Trollip in good standing.
Sixolise Gcilishe is no politician.
Looking like a deer caught in the headlights, it’s clear that she is not one for the limelight.
She prefers to be the one asking the questions or, in the case of her new appointment, giving the answers.
“I’m originally from King William’s Town. We are represented by Steve Biko there. I am from the home of Biko, so you see this thing is in the air we breathe,” she says with a coy giggle.
“I went to the same high school that Biko and Steve Tshwete went to. I am not trying to name drop, but it’s that great. Your Victoria Mxenges went to school there, we can’t help it, it’s just that great,” she says of Forbes Grant Senior Secondary School in Ginsberg.
Coming from a home that was more religious than political, she has had to figure things out herself in terms of where she stands politically.
“I still hold religion close to my heart. As we grow older, we try and make sense of the things that we were taught.”
Previously, her Saturdays were spent in church where she would observe the Sabbath, but now the 34-year-old is more likely to be in an EFF rally belting out her favourite struggle song, Thina Sizwe.
The former president Jacob Zuma version or the EFF national spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi version?
Neither, her heart was stolen by the Simphiwe Dana rendition.
What is it about Trollip that Gcilishe finds fascinating?
“Athol fascinates me as a human being. It is not even about the language, it is what is required for you to learn someone else’s language. It was this person who didn’t have to learn any African languages, but he thought: ‘I need to learn this language.’
“I don’t think he was forced to. There are many farmers in this country, but how many Trollips do you have that speak an African language fluently?
“He doesn’t need an interpreter when communicating with his constituency like other leaders do. I was saying if you look at the liberal whites in the ruling party, they can’t even connect with us in terms of speaking even one of the many African languages we have,” she says with great conviction, speaking also of the changes that she has seen in her home region since Trollip’s appointment.
This is despite the EFF’s stance on Trollip, who the party has vowed to remove from the position to teach the Democratic Alliance a lesson.
On her own political standing, Gcilishe admits that she only recently became a card-carrying member of the EFF.
“I agree with the [EFF commander in chief Julius Malema] that the EFF is a victim of parties that came before it. Even when you support it, you do so from a distance. You want to wait and see how the party fares, whether it will collapse or not. For me, I have been supporting the EFF from the start in principle, but I was also waiting to see if it is another Cope.
“I have never been a member of the ANC. In the region that I am from you find your Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and Azanian People’s Organisation, who were very popular at the time, even more so than the ANC. I didn’t have a lot of ANC influence, it was more the other two.”
On the EFF’s strategy, Gcilishe says she has always had great admiration for whoever is the “strategist” behind the party, saying that she has often told friends and family that it is a mind that she wants to work with.
Undaunted by the mammoth task ahead of her, she says she is ready to relieve national spokesperson Ndlozi of some of his duties so that he is able to do more work on the ground, particularly in the run-up to next year’s general election.
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