Former President Nelson Mandela on Monday chided younger African National Congress members for being unaware of the role played by the South African Communist Party in the liberation struggle.
In an interview published in the Sowetan newspaper, he was asked about the recent public spat between the ANC and the SACP over the Jeremy Cronin issue.
Mandela would not be drawn on discussing ”my organisation with the press”, saying it would be a mistake for any senior ANC leader and a member of the alliance to ”express any reservations about what has happened in the relationship between the two organisations”.
However, in an apparent reference to statements by the ANC youth league and others, he said: ”One of the things that you people don’t know is that at the darkest hour of our oppression, when the government made sure they took away our assets… The SACP used to bring us money to meet our obligations, and they did this regularly.
”Now these young people today do not know that. They think they can treat the Communist Party anyhow, and I am not blaming any individual.
”But I want to tell you that young people just don’t know what the Communist Party has done for the struggle in this country. I was there.”
Mandela said when he and senior SACP leader, the late Joe Slovo were at university together, ”we were old friends, but we used to fight every day”.
”But we respected each other. Unfortunately, young people today don’t know that.
”The Communist Party has played a wonderful role in this country. I wouldn’t like them to go out to criticise either the Communist Party or the ANC,” Mandela said.
In July this year, SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin drew sharp condemnation from ANC officials after he said that the ANC was ”’bureaucratising’ along the lines of Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF.”
At a later media briefing, the ANC’s head of presidency, Smuts Ngonyama, was reported to have described Cronin as ”being unfaithful and spreading deliberate lies”. He also said Cronin was ”out of order”.
The SACP responded by saying it was flabbergasted by the ANC’s attempt to ”assassinate the character” of Cronin.
It was unwarranted and also undermined the spirit, letter and content of the ANC-SACP-Cosatu-SA National Civics Organisation alliance.
Shortly afterwards, ANC KwaZulu-Natal MPL Dumisani Makhaye reportedly referred to Cronin as ”a white messiah and a factory fault”.
He is alleged to have also said: ”There are dogs who are biting the ANC and these dogs are calling themselves our friends.”
Makhaye subsequently denied that he had attacked the SACP as an organisation, saying ”Cronin is not a party but an individual”.
ANC youth league president Malusi Gigaba, was also reported at the time to be critical of Cronin.
The spat ended when Cronin apologised unconditionally to the ANC’s national executive committee in August.
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said then the party had ”full confidence in our deputy general secretary, and we consider the issue closed”. – Sapa