Blade slams state capture, corruption
The time of keeping quiet has passed, says SACP general secretary
WEDNESDAY JULY 12 2017
SA COMMUNIST Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande decried the deepening crisis in the ANC, rampant corruption and state capture, and wondered whether South Africa was still a functioning state.
“We did not fight (to) liberate the country only to hand it over to the Gupta family. We are concerned that some of our institutions are being eroded. I know that you, comrade Jessie (Duarte, ANC deputy general secretary, and comrade Gwede (Mantashe, ANC secretary-general) do not like it when we talk about this… but we will. There are burglaries at state organs… the intelligence, the Hawks (Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation), the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority),” Nzimande said as he delivered the SACP’s political report at the party’s 14th congress in Ekurhuleni.
“We should not underestimate all these. The question is, do we have a state? What is to be done?” he asked.
Delegates replied with “contest elections”.
Nzimande downplayed their response, adding that commission discussions had yet to start.
In a scathing speech that frequently quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin and former ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Nzimande said the time of keeping quiet had passed. He said South Africa had a parallel state, and that in the face of the exposure of corruption and state capture, allegedly by the Gupta family, there had been a “parasitic patronage network” seeking to downplay this exposure through propaganda. He singled out the Gupta-owned ANN7 television news channel and The New Age newspaper.
“The SABC, under (former chief operating officer Hlaudi) Motsoeneng has been taken to the dogs. I wonder how many decades it will take to fix it, it is dead. ANN7 is a joke, The New Age newspaper was promising at the beginning; then there is a group of thugs who go around disrupting ANC and SACP meetings they do not like.
“These are some of the things that should concern us – and their diversionary ideological platform,” Nzimande said to a loud applause.
Black First Land First (BLF) leader Andile Mngxitama was a “political mercenary”, he said.
The high court interdicted the BLF from harassing journalists the organisation accused of targeting the Gupta family.
“Mngxitama came with a group and disrupted our march to AgriSA in early 2000. When we launched the land campaign as the SACP, we went to tell him to stop using the name of black people for aggressive behaviour.
“We have our differences with the media, but we must not tolerate such attacks on the media, they do not deserve to be treated this way.”
Turning to the ANC Polokwane conference where President Jacob Zuma emerged victorious, Nzimande, once a staunch Zuma supporter, said he felt betrayed by what the ANC had become. Everything changed post-2014 as state capture “is on steroids”, he said.
Nzimande said the first step towards reversing the damage caused by state capture was for the state to urgently stop doing business with the Guptas.
This, he said, would ensure that governance was rapidly restored. – ANA