Why won’t the SACP go it alone?
BY FIRING SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande from his cabinet, President Jacob Zuma reaffirmed the sorry state of the SACP.
The president once again publicly called the communists’ bluff.
Reshuffling in broad daylight; he stuck it to the communists and then drove to Limpopo to unveil bridges.
Zuma reminded his comrades of his most important expectation – defend me. If not, shut up or get out.
The 12th cabinet reshuffle had more to do with new Minister of Energy David Mahlobo moving to the Department of Energy.
Contrary to what SACP second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila believes, Zuma wasn’t after Nzimande as such.
Zuma was more concerned with completing the nuclear deal than removing Nzimande.
Suggestions indicate that Nzimande was removed simply because Number One centralised his presidential prerogative; he was fired because Zuma can.
He was used as a reminder to Zuma’s internal opponents that no one is above his wrath.
The SACP’s past and present prove that communists are the most abused comrades in the tripartite alliance.
Former president Thabo Mbeki renounced his SACP membership in 1990.
Seven years later, he rode on the SACP’s back en route to the ANC’s presidency at the Mahikeng conference.
Fast forward to 2007 and Mbeki had ignored the party so badly – Zuma was presented to the nation as Moses reincarnated.
Nzimande wept tears of joy at the Polokwane conference after party, celebrating the outcome.
After that Polokwane conference Zuma sang for the communists, dined and laughed with them.
He gave them more cabinet positions, listened to their suggestions on government policies and gave them space to speak their minds in public.
When he no longer agreed with their public outbursts he began to ignore them too.
But Zuma took things a step further; he divided the party’s national leadership by separating its head from the rest of its cabinet members. The move left Mapaila at pains trying to justify why it would not call for mass cabinet resignations.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa is already keeping an arm’s length from the alliance partner.
His politics are nowhere near leftist thinking. The SACP could also be the only communist party in history to support a businessman’s presidency.
Their candidate will frustrate them in future; when he begins ignoring them too.
In his defence he won’t ignore them like Mbeki nor will he confront them like Zuma. He will instead hear their grievances, do nothing about them, call for unity and start the process again.
Why can’t the SACP go at it alone?
This would be a good question if it weren’t so painfully obvious. Its leaders have made careers out of government positions for too long to breakaway from the alliance.
They know they have no chance of being kingmakers, let alone winning national elections. Politics would be shaken to the core if the party ever sniffed anything above 5% of the national vote. The organisation is therefore left with no option but to suck it up.
They either leave to sit on the opposite benches forever, joining the PAC wherever it is or keep threatening to leave each time they are ignored by the very president they supported.
Outside of the alliance, the SACP would be toothless and irrelevant.
Inside it is treated like the unwanted stepchild everyone pretends to support.
History will remember the post-1994 SACP as being in dire straits from the dawn of South Africa’s democracy. Boitshepo Monaledi