Bilateral meeting cancelled
THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED bilateral meeting between the ANC and SACP collapsed at the 11th hour because ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and SACP’s Blade Nzimande could not agree on the agenda.
The meeting was supposed to have taken place on Monday.
SACP acting spokesperson Mhlekwa Nxumalo said they wanted to brief the ruling party leadership on their resolutions taken at the July elective conference.
These included their repeated call for President Jacob Zuma to step down and that the Communist Party had resolved to contest elections in 2019. Nxumalo said Nzimande spoke over the phone with Mantashe about an hour before the meeting was due to take place at the ANC’s Luthuli House headquarters in Joburg.
“We wanted to check and satisfy ourselves with the agenda items that would be discussed, so that we all agree on them. But during the telephone discussion between the secretariats we discovered that the ANC had its priority items they wanted to put forward on the agenda and we also had ours,” Nxumalo told Independent Media.
“It was clear that if we proceeded with that meeting it would not have been helpful to either of the organisations.
“Therefore, it was agreed that the secretariats of the ANC and the SACP should sit down and prioritise all the issues that needed to be discussed and to schedule another meeting in two weeks’ time.”
Nxumalo would not be drawn in on other SACP items that were on the agenda.
“I don’t think it’s fair to share them with the media until we have shared them with the ANC.”
He admitted, however, that some of the issues they would have tabled before the ANC leadership included their call for Zuma to go and that the SACP intended contesting state power. “Yes, we had those items on the agenda and a few others that were going to be discussed.”
Mantashe said: “We agreed to develop a comprehensive agenda and to be focused and not to be all over the place. We also wanted to avoid a bilateral that becomes a mudslinging (exercise).”
Mantashe said a date for another meeting between the two parties had not yet been set “but it will be held soon”.
Political analysts have warned that there won’t be any “fruitful meetings” between the two parties in the lead-up to the ANC elective conference in December.
Wits University political analyst Susan Booysen said that the alliance partners could not agree on the agenda was the “worst kind of indictment of the Zuma Presidency”.
“This is seriously bad and an indication of what the ANC has come to in the time of Jacob Zuma.
“In fact, for all political purposes there is no alliance anymore.”
Booysen said the SACP’s demands were “reasonable and find widespread resonance in society”.
Another political analyst, Dumisani Hlophe, said the meeting between the two parties was “not going to work”.
“The SACP doesn’t recognise the leadership of President Zuma. Between now and December there won’t be any fruitful alliance meetings of any sort. The relationship between the two organisations is hostile because of that no confidence vote on President Zuma by the SACP.”