SACP urges ANC to fight capture of the state
THE SACP has called on the ANC to discourage factions and to commit itself to the fight against state capture.
Yesterday, the tripartite alliance partner stopped short of saying it would contest the elections on its own if the ANC did not get its house in order.
But the SACP has given itself until December, after the ANC national elective conference, to determine whether the ANC is still fit to be the mother of its alliance partners – or whether to seek an alternative arrangement.
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said his party was not sure whether the “ANC wants to unite itself or smash itself ”.
“We do not want the ANC to elect a faction at its national elective conference. If we did it in the past, we are no longer prepared to do it,” Nzimande said.
He maintained that the next six months would be an important barometer for his party to carefully assess the political situation in the country as well as the ANC’s efforts to put a stop to state capture.
Although the party declined to reveal the identities of those it regards as factionalists, it was pleased that the ANC had agreed to its demand to have the ANC’s deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa address the SACP’s 14th national congress at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg tomorrow.
The SACP’s second deputy general secretary, Solly Mapaila, said the decision to have Ramaphosa address the congress was “for obvious reasons”.
“You know that we’ve asked the ANC president (Jacob Zuma) to step down. We did not want a repeat of the May Day fiasco that occurred at the Cosatu celebrations in Bloemfontein.
“We felt it was appropriate that we wrote to the ANC to inform them that we needed any delegate other than the president,” Mapaila said.
They had written that letter to the ANC to ensure it wasn’t Zuma who was sent to address their delegates.
Supporting the exclusion of Zuma, the outgoing SACP first deputy general secretary, Jeremy Cronin, expressed his disappointment at the ANC’s decision to postpone its traditional political council meetings with its alliance partners.
Cronin described the postponements as regrettable but said his party was still committed to the alliance.
“We value the alliance. We are committed to the national democratic revolution, and that requires a national democratic front,” Cronin said.
He was reacting to questions about whether the ANC would be contesting the 2019 elections on its own.
Despite its commitment to the alliance, the SACP leaders created the impression at their media briefing that they would not support any candidate backed by Zuma.
“We are not pushing the ANC off the cliff… There are people who are driving it over the cliff,” Cronin said.
According to the SACP, the litmus test for their support of the ANC would be a new leadership that was committed to the fight against state capture. It said the ANC top six under Zuma was “in paralysis”.
“We want a leadership capable of renewing and reviving the ANC and to deal with state capture,” Cronin said.
The SACP has also committed itself to talk to various ANC senior members, such as the 101 veterans, who were shunned by Zuma, as well as Save South Africa, faith-based organisations and other parties not aligned to the ANC, with the view to strengthening the Left and socialist forces in the country.