Manuel accused of ‘duplicity’

SA COMMUNIST Party deputy chairman and Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi yesterday accused Trevor Manuel of duplicity following an article in which the former finance minister suggested the communist party had lost its way.

In the article, titled “Is the SACP staying true to its origins?” which Manuel wrote for the City Press newspaper, he questioned the role of the SACP in the current political context, while recalling that traditionally it had been to ensure that ANC leaders understood policy and conducted themselves in a highly principled manner.

Manuel wrote: “Do we understand the role of the SACP? Is one of its roles not to develop a cadre of leadership rather than a movement that protests on any issue that comes along?” Nxesi asked why Manuel, during his long cabinet tenure, first as Treasury boss and then as planning minister, remained silent if he had doubts about the place of the SACP in the tripartite alliance.

“For three decades, the former finance minister operated at the highest level of the alliance – indeed he was a creation of the same alliance. During that time not once did he raise his misgivings with the SACP and the alliance,” Nxesi told delegates at the Cosatu special national congress. “Only now does he run to capitalist media to recycle old stories... this smacks of either cowardice or duplicity.”

Manuel served as finance minister under three post-apartheid presidents. The Rothschild financing group appointed him as its senior adviser last year.