Wally Mbhele
Deputy minister and African National Congress firebrand Peter Mokaba has stirred up a hornets nest by questioning whether South African Communist Party (SACP) members should remain members of the ANC.
Querying whether the present form of the tripartite alliance holds any benefits for the movement, he has taken on one of the liberation movements holiest of holy cows in a report prepared for the ANCs December conference.
While the controversial Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism has no problem with Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions] members holding positions in the ANC, he says the present arrangement with the SACP fails to advance the alliance.
Mokabas discussion paper makes him the first ANC leader ever to question publicly the dual leadership role members of the SACP have both in the government and the ANC.
In all senses, he says, the SACP has become a mere caucus within the ANC, rather than an independent partner in the alliance. Meetings of the communist party have simply become meetings of some ANC members to the exclusion of others.
Stressing that his discussion has nothing to do with the dissolution of the alliance between the ANC and the SACP, Mokaba asks whether the current arrangement is the best form of expression of such an alliance or not.
The alliance must continue and grow even stronger … but, according to Mokaba, who is also a member of the ANCs national executive committee, is it fair to the ANC that certain members of the ANC who sit in ANC meetings and take decisions there must be able to convene under another name and criticise decisions they took as the ANC?
Is such a practice a form of ill- discipline or opportunism? Under what circumstances is it permitted? How should the ANC decide or formulate and publish its response to such criticism independently of the SACP?
He sees the situation as distinguished from that of members of Cosatu and affiliates, who are not required to be ANC members.
These, like every member of an organ of civil society, he says, find their only political expression in the ANC. They are organs of civil society just as churches, business associations, schools and cultural organisations are.
But, Mokaba argues, the same cannot be said of the SACP.
His controversial submission forms part of a 25-page discussion document that is already circulating within the ANC Youth League and is likely to spark a heated debate on the issue. The submission is also circulating more widely within ANC ranks, but it is unclear to what extent he has canvassed support.
The practical consequence of the change he is mooting is that SACP members would have to choose between the two parties, and those party members who wanted to remain public representatives would have to contest their positions on an SACP platform.
Though he does not directly offer an alternative, it is suspected Mokabas document represents an emerging view among the Africanists within the ANC who argue for the exclusion of communists from the partys decision-making structures.
Some inside the ANC have suggested that the new concept of Africanism is merely a cover for the emerging black liberals who are seeking to justify their shift to the right.