JULIUS MALEMA, the baby-faced leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), South Africa’s newest political party, wants to nationalise the mines and hand white farms to blacks without compensation. His heroes are Hugo Chávez, the populist leader of Venezuela who died earlier this year, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Before he was expelled from the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Mr Malema was head of the party’s Youth League, a post once filled by Nelson Mandela.

His political goal now is to damage his old comrades at next year’s election, expected in April. His personal goal is to fight off fraud charges that could yet land him in jail. Mr Malema features endlessly in the press, has a neat turn of phrase and the nous to find spots where ANC support is shaky. He chose Marikana, where 34 striking miners were shot dead by police last year, as the place to launch the EFF on October 13th. Can Mr Malema capture votes as well as headlines?

The ANC has old and close ties to the South African Communist Party and rarely cedes ground to its left. But that flank is more vulnerable than usual. The economy is still weak and jobs scarce. Youth unemployment is over 50%. Yet a tack to the left would frighten foreign investors on whom South Africa relies to fund its gaping current-account deficit. At the party’s quinquennial conference in December, President Jacob Zuma quashed all talk of nationalisation.

This makes room for the EFF’s populist platform. The cohort of 2m or so South Africans aged 18-19 that is eligible to vote for the first time in 2014 is a natural target. Those born after 1994, when apartheid ended, may be less impressed than were their parents by the ANC’s history as freedom fighters and more worried about their job prospects. Even so, the EFF will struggle to put much of a dent in the 66% share of the vote the ANC won at the polls last time, in 2009.

It will be hard for a new party to build an election machine fast. But a bigger problem is that the young don’t vote. The electoral commission reckons that less than 10% of 18-19-year-olds are registered. Only half of more than 9m South Africans aged 20-29 are on the roll. Still, Mr Malema should get a few seats in Parliament, hoping to make a bigger challenge in 2019, if he can only avoid prison.