Blade rallies communists to state capture clean-up
● SACP boss Blade Nzimande yesterday called on his party members to support President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempts to “dismantle” the criminal state capture network.
Nzimande’s call came as Ramaphosa suspended South African Revenue Service commissioner Tom Moyane after informing him that he had lost faith in his leadership.
It also follows a cabinet reshuffle that saw the removal of Gupta-linked ministers, and changes to the leadership at Eskom.
Nzimande, who was recently appointed minister of transport, was speaking at the funeral service of SACP leader Charles Setsubi at the Germiston City Hall. He said although the Guptas had left South Africa, there was a need to clean up their influence in the state.
“The urgent task of the revolution now . . . is to dismantle parasitic criminal networks around the state and in the movement. The president of the ANC and the country, Comrade Ramaphosa . . . we must support his crusade to lead the fight to dismantle these networks.”
Nzimande said when he arrived at the Department of Transport he realised “the challenge is huge”. He did not elaborate.
He complained that in some parts of the country, the ANC had been taken over by gangsters.
He told the story of a video clip doing the rounds on social media of a group of armed men who stormed the disciplinary hearing of a municipal official in eThekwini and demanded that the hearing be stopped. He said the incident proved that the ANC had been hijacked by gangsters.
“They say: ‘You can’t discipline this person. She is our champion of radical economic transformation.’
“You get tsotsis [and] gangsters now acting in the name of the ANC and actually disrupting things that must be done.”
He instructed the SACP in KwaZulu-Natal to approach the ANC to find out who the men were.
“Let’s get rid of the lumpen element that we might have attracted to leadership positions in our movement as a whole. Asiwafuni ama 26 nama 28 [we don’t want gangsters in our movement] ,” said Nzimande
The funeral service was attended by other senior leaders, such as Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi and Deputy Minister of Defence Kebby Maphatsoe.
Let’s get rid of the lumpen element that we might have attracted to leadership positions in our movement as a whole . . . we don’t want gangsters in our movement Blade Nzimande SACP leader and minister of transport