We won’t go it alone – Cronin
THE SACP yesterday tread carefully on the subject of challenging for state power and contesting elections as a stand-alone political party.
This as former SACP first deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin bravely and politely brushed off ambitions of some of the party’s members for it to contest elections, saying a breakaway from the tripartite alliance would reverse the gains of the workers and further damage the tripartite alliance.
“The SACP is not, nor will it become, a narrowly electoralist formation (which is) exactly one of the current problems of the ANC. We need to understand the dangers we are facing as an alliance and as the ANC. Let us ensure that we help the ANC get in good order,” Cronin said.
“Our commitment to elections is guided by our overarching strategic commitment to advance, deepen and defend a radical National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the South African road to socialism.
“Our strategic objective in regard to state power is to secure, not party political, but working-class hegemony over the state, as part of our wider medium-term vision to build working-class hegemony in all sites of power,” he said.
The SACP is in alliance with the ANC and Cosatu, and has never contested elections on its own. ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday warned the SACP against going it alone in 2019.
At its 14th national congress, the SACP has been actively calling for the reconfiguration of the alliance where it would have a louder voice and bigger decision-making influence, while also toying with the idea of contesting elections.
Presenting the party’s report on state power at the congress, Cronin decried the current state of the alliance, saying that the alliance was “actively reconfiguring by decomposing” as a result of ANC’s leadership paralysis and parasitic capture.
Cronin tabled two scenarios in which the SACP seizes the moment electorally and another in which it pauses and waits for the outcome of the ANC elective conference in December.
In one scenario, Cronin said that the SACP must lead a new front for socialism, a Left front. In another scenario, Cronin asked if it was the right moment to make a decision, bearing in mind that the ANC would hold an elective conference in December.
“The outcomes of the December conference are extremely uncertain. What happens if the Premier League slate wins? Some of us won’t remain. A major reconfiguration is needed and we need to infuse a greater socialist, anti-capitalist inflexion into the NDR platform.”
So what are electoral estimations in an SACP-led Left or popular front electoral platform? “We don’t know and it’s difficult to know until or unless the SACP launches a party-led campaign,” Cronin said.
“In the early 2000s at the height of the SACP/Cosatu Left axis campaigning against the 1996 Class Project, a Cosatu funded shop-steward survey found the SACP’s ideology and campaigns were appreciated,but only 6% expressed support for an independent SACP electoral ticket. But things have changed since then.”