So a bit of context, the EFF is a prominent pan-African, ostensibly ML leftist party in South Africa. This is an FAQ from early 2024, that same year the country had an election in late May. Personally, I don't think the EFF arrived at these sentiments wanting to appeal to western liberals or whatever. If you know anything about Malema or the EFF, you'd know that they are not concerned with playing soft with right-wingers, much to the chagrin of the compromised ANC and white supremacist "Democratic" Alliance. Not sure who wrote it, but from the writing style I think it might have been written by either Shivambu or Malema himself.
Some quotes for those who don't want to read:
Stalin and Mao were NOT Marxists, they were actually quite anti-Marxist in that they led regimes based not on democratic control of the state by the workers, but rather based on totalitarian control by an elite stratum of bureaucrats who were a parasite on the workers' state.
The Stalinists were terrified of any potential opposition, and especially the intellectuals that they could not control. They were snuffed out, in many cases quite literally. Individual expression was portrayed as counter-revolutionary, even culture was subjugated to the "collective will" - not of society but of a handful of bureaucrats desperate to cling on to their power and privilege.
Had the Communist International remained firm on the positions of Lenin and Trotsky, the victory of the world revolution would have been ensured. Unfortunately, the Comintern's formative years coincided with the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia, which had a disastrous effect on the Communist Parties of the entire world.
You should have linked the FAQ here so that we could have access to it.
If those quotes are from the EFF, then the mention of Trotsky alongside the mention of "Stalinism" (an unscientific descriptor used by those that fight against the self-proclaimed Stalinist authoritarian regime) already means that they have a strange Trotskyist stance or leaning in general (no one cares about Trotsky except for Trotskyists, I imagine). Their explanations for why Stalin and Mao were not Marxists end up being typical liberal explanations for communists in general. Also, what counterrevolution was conducted under Stalinism? There was an attempted counterrevolution against the government, but resisting against that is not counterrevolutionary!
It does not matter whether or not they are trying to appeal to western liberals: They are influenced by the liberal methodology of historical idealism and anti-communism, but give off an air of Marxism by appealing to the "correct Marxism" of Lenin and Trotsky. Opportunism such as this is quite honestly annoying and confuses the proletariat into believing that the socialist projects under Mao and Stalin were failures that should not be emulated.
I actually did link the FAQ, but will hyperlink it here for your convenience.
I'd agree that there is some chance of opportunism being a good explanation for this. I think that Shivambu being the author of the FAQ would be a good explanation for this, he deserted the EFF for the MKP despite the former's previous opposition to the latter's leader some years ago. That said, I find it strange that this doesn't come up more often given the praise the EFF tends to get on many online ML spaces, including here on grad. I don't think this makes the org any less worthy of support of course, Malema is pretty much the only mainstream South African politician I trust to pick up where the tripartite alliance gave up in terms of decolonisation and land back, but it is nonetheless strange given how often I've heard of Trotskyism being a largely first world phenomenon.
I have never heard of that person or the party you mentioned before your post, so maybe it was that ex-EFF member you mentioned (but who knows?).
Edit: Sorry I did not realize that you linked it.
Right, sorry I figured that if you know the EFF and Malema, you'd probably know Shivambu. Floyd Shivambu was a close friend of Malema going back to their time in the ANCYL, and later helped co-found the EFF. MKP was formed by former president Zuma and really ate into the EFF's votes during the May 2024 elections. Subsequently Shivambu and a bunch of other prominent EFF leadership figures defected to the MKP under the guise of "coalition building", but I personally suspect he did it as a career move.