Howard Barrell
The South African Communist Party leadership has called for a special meeting next week with Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and other top African National Congress officials to try to resolve the crisis in relations between the two organisations.
The SACP wants the talks to take place before an ANC national executive committee meeting scheduled for next weekend. It has written a letter to this effect to the ANC. The party was still waiting for the ANC’s response this Thursday, according to Jeremy Cronin, SACP deputy general secretary.
The ANCdenied on Thursday having received any letter from the SACP about a meeting and said that consequently no such talks were planned.
In speeches to the SACP congress last month, President Nelson Mandela and Mbeki issued unprecedented public rebukes to the party, the ANC’s oldest ally, for its attacks on government economic policy and for implying in documents that some ANC leaders are obstacles to social transformation.
Any further deterioration in relations between the two parties could lead to serious disruption within both parties, as well as at the top levels of government.
Membership of the two parties overlaps considerably. Five Cabinet ministers, two deputy ministers and about 80 MPs are members of both the ANC and SACP. The SACP has about 20 000 paid-up members and another 60 000 members on its books, many of whom also belong to the ANC.
Shortly after Mandela’s and Mbeki’s reprimands, the SACP leadership and ANC national working committee decided separately it was desirable in principle that they meet to sort out their difficulties. A month later, the SACP has grown impatient to set a date for such talks.
The SACP wants the meeting to bring together its five top officials and the ANC’s most important leaders, according to Cronin. The SACP envisages its delegation comprising general secretary Blade Nzimande; chair Charles Nqakula; deputy chair Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who is also minister of welfare; Cronin; and Thaba Mufamadi, treasurer.
The SACP hopes the ANC delegation would include Mbeki, ANC president; Jacob Zuma, deputy president; secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe; deputy secretary general Thenjiwe Mthintso; and treasurer general Mendi Msimang. Mthintso is also a prominent SACP member, who served on its politburo, the party’s top executive organ, until last weekend.
Other SACP officials said they thought there could be some tense moments at a meeting. “But we will stand our ground,” said one.
The SACP now wants to restabilise its alliance with the ANC, and there is no suggestion of the party withdrawing from it, two other officials told the Mail & Guardian.
“We will not roll on to our backs. Nor will we be looking for a fight. We want to strengthen the tripartite alliance and help lead a healthy debate inside it,” said one.
Changes in the composition of the SACP’s politburo last weekend could further complicate ANC/SACP relations before a meeting. Some observers have interpreted the ousting from the politburo of Essop Pahad, deputy minister in the Office of the Deputy President, and Mbhazima Shilowa, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, as a slight to Mbeki.
Pahad is seen by many as Mbeki’s “Mr Fixit”, and Shilowa as a key Mbeki ally in the deputy president’s sometimes awkward relations with parts of the trade union movement.
But SACP officials insisted that closeness to Mbeki had nothing to do with the fact that the central committee members voted the two men off the politburo. The sources pointed out that Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi, a close Mbeki ally, had been voted back on to the politburo.
They said Pahad’s exclusion resulted from his sometimes “confrontational” and “intolerant” manner, which had soured his relations with a number of party members. In the case of Shilowa, many party members felt he was not devoting enough time to his SACP duties.
The rising stars of the new politburo appear to be Phillip Dexter, a young ANC MP and former trade unionist, and Mbuya Ngwanda, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. Both new members, they are seen by some party members as future intellectual leading lights.
Other new members of the politburo include Yunus Carrim, an ANC MP; Ncumiso Kondlo, an ANC MP from the Eastern Cape; Nomaindia Mfeketo, a Cape Town municipal leader and regional ANC official; and Dipuo Mvelase, a former Umkhonto weSizwe guerrilla who is now a security official in Johannesburg.
Members who kept their politburo positions include Deputy Minister of Defence Ronnie Kasrils and Gwede Mantash, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. Nzimande, Nqakula, Fraser-Moleketi, Cronin and Thaba Mufamadi retain their politburo membership on account of their elected positions in the party hierarchy.