SA Communists speak out over Zuma
THE South African Communist Party has drawn a line in the sand for President Jacob Zuma, suggesting that he is too powerful both in the cabinet and the national executive committee. The party, who for a long time was silent about Zuma’s administration, also said the president cannot be seen to be leading a faction of the African National Congress. Members of the SACP are under fire from the dominant faction of the ANC, comprising the chairman of the North West, Mpumalanga, Free State and KwaZulu Natal provinces and are among those likely to face the chop in Zuma’s next cabinet reshuffle.
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande yesterday said “serious corrective action” had to be taken to ensure the decline in the ANC’s election performance did not accelerate. There was a “prevailing view” that the movement had lost its moral compass.
The party expressed disappointment at the ANC’s reaction to the elections, saying it had diagnosed the problems correctly, but South Africans were hoping for a clearer sign of a willingness to act decisively on these problems. Deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin said while the NEC was right to take collective responsibility, it was also necessary to take individual responsibility. He said SA operated in a collective system – through the cabinet in government and through the NEC in the ANC, not as a “presidential arrangement”.
The ANC decision to campaign by foregrounding Zuma and not local issues and not local mayoral candidates “played into the hands of the opposition campaign”.
Cronin said the tendency toward presidentialism was likely a result of the SA’s legacy of its first democratic president Nelson Mandela.
The SACP has called on the ANC to convene a consultative national conference where it should discuss the problems it faces andways to ensure a smooth leadership transition.
Nzimande warned that an early elective conference, which he says was proposed in a factional way by the ANC Youth League would deepen the disunity in the party.
Nzimande said a consultative conference should develop mechanisms to ensure that the ANC’s next elective conference in 2017 was not a “shoot out between winner takes all, mutually exclusive slates”.
“Regardless of the winning slate, such an outcome will simply accelerate the decline of the ANC,” he said.
Second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila, speaking on how the ANC can root out factionalism, said Zuma cannot be seen to be leading a faction. The premier league faction has done things in the president’s name and no leader in the top six has spoken out against them.
The party threw its support behind Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, saying the Hawks investigation into him smacked of the attempt to prosecute Zuma before he became ANC president, whose motives are political to capture the National Treasury.