Jaspreet Kindra
African National Congress secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe said this week that the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) had launched an offensive on ultra-leftists allegedly dividing the tripartite alliance because “we want to show we are not weaklings”.
Motlanthe said ANC branches were aware of the ultra-leftist “tendency” singled out in a leaked NEC document as undermining the ANC government and promoting counter-revolution. “The general membership knows them and experiences them all the time.” He would not give names.
This week, NEC members addressed regional general councils of the ANC office-bearers of party branches across the country, in a quest for endorsement of its position.
The national leadership claims, among other things, that the Congress of South African Trade Unions aims to become a political party outside the alliance, that the South African Communist Party has deviated from the Leninst path, and that the “rightwing” ultra-left tendencies in the leadership of Cosatu and the SACP were misleading their constituencies on the government’s economy policy.
Motlanthe said the councils’ response had been “very supportive” of debating the issues raised by the document. The party had consulted 37 of the 52 councils it planned to meet, and would complete its consultation in the next two weeks.
The ANC is also believed to be meeting the SACP this weekend, in line with the document’s call for bilaterals with Cosatu and the SACP to “isolate and defeat” ultra-left elements in the alliance.
An opinion sample of council members indicates a mixed reaction. ANC members who do not belong to other alliance organisations largely supported the NEC stance. In regions with a strong background of communist party and United Democratic Front activism, such as Durban and Pietermaritzburg, there was more scepticism. Pietersburg was also cited as a region where council members were unhappy.
Sources said some council members had asked how the SACP had “deviated from the Leninist path, and what difference there was between “restructuring” government’s preferred term and privatisation. The question had also been posed about how the ANC’s national leadership had arrived at positions without consulting the leaders of its alliance partners.
A party member in Mpumalanga commented: “This is a sad day for us now they are trying to turn us against our brothers. They are trying to stifle the culture of debate within the alliance.”
There have also been reports of regions where party members listened to the positions spelt out in the document in silence.
One member said: “We are not experiencing any problems with our alliance partners at this level why don’t they sort it out at the top?”
However, the NEC is understood to have received the endorsement of municipal councillors, a large number of whom sit on the party’s regional bodies. A source said this was because many had been embroiled in confrontations with the militant South African Municipal Workers’ Union.
The NEC document is understood to have been read out to “an eerily quiet” ANC parliamentary caucus room last Thursday by party chair Mosioua Lekota.
Sources said Lekota told them that debate on the document would only take place at a later date still to be announced. Members were also issued strict instructions against leaking details of the document, until it was pointed out that most of it was already in the public domain.
It is rumoured that at the last NEC meeting in late September, former president Nelson Mandela expressed unhappiness with the ANC leadership’s handling of the tensions with its alliance partners. It is believed that this formed a substantial part of his address at the meeting.