Between 1994 and 2004 the ANC’s support rose six points because employment doubled and services were delivered; after 2008 it turned populist and fell away. The EFF went harder-line populist and never held much more than 10% of the vote in a country where more than half of young people have no job. Frans explains to Gabriel Makin why it was never about ideology or liberation loyalty but the material circumstances of people, why the great reformers of the last fifty years were pragmatists, and why the younger Mr Zuma’s answer to that question decides the MKP’s future.