Communist Party starts new campaign

South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande has confirmed that the party will be testifying at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

He was speaking at the party’s launch of its 2018/19 Red October campaign in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, and delivered the keynote address on local government with the tagline “Stop corruption, serve people selflessly”.

The SACP’s official Twitter account retweeted a video in which Nzimande can be heard saying the “SACP can’t be threatened by people who’ve been using intelligence institutions illegally to gather information”.

Nzimande also commented on the current state of municipalities across the country and said the SACP had identified a number of problems faced by them.

However, the SACP’s Red October campaign would be focusing on at least two of these problem: “systemic and rampant corruption, including corporate capture within our municipalities” and a lack of efficiency, coupled with the persisting inequality in infrastructure development, as well as in the provision of quality services.

According to Nzimande, the legacy of apartheid-era spatial planning and class inequalities allowed this status quo to persist and the recent Total Shutdown demonstrations in coloured townships across Gauteng were proof of what happens when situations are left to boil over.