President Thabo Mbeki seems to have changed his mind about political smearwords.
The South African Communist Party has highlighted a speech Mbeki made in 1998 in which he strongly criticises the use of ”ultra-left” and other labels to isolate political opponents.
The online edition of the SACP’s monthly print publication Umsebenzi, launched this week, quotes liberally from the speech, made at a Congress of South African Trade Unions central committee meeting.
”We must not fall victim to the easy temptation to label one another as this or that school of thought, and thus close the dialogue among ourselves. Indeed, I have noticed these days some comrades seem to think that the attachment of political labels, like the labelling of different brands of beer, is some honourable revolutionary occupation.
”This one is ultra-left. The other is neo-liberal and another is right wing. Sometimes, when we are supposed to think and analyse the complex situation we all face demands, we resort to throwing around swearwords. And all of us know that to swear [at] somebody is to look for a fight and not a discussion, even among those who might call one another comrades.”
In his opening speech at the African National Congress’s policy conference held last month Mbeki lambasted ultra-leftists in the ruling alliance, also accusing them of collaborating with rightwingers.
Umsebenzi Online argues that ”brandishing an ultra-left label, without specific identification of who the ultra-left is” could be dangerous because it acts as a substitute for proper analysis, shuts down debate and can be ”factionalising”.
Umsebenzi Online says labelling will help to ”strengthen and elevate this tiny and marginal ultra-left to be a force that it is not. It also weakens our very struggles to defeat ultra-leftism within our ranks.”
The SACP endorses the ANC’s positions taken at its policy conference on restructuring to redirect parastatals towards meeting the developmental goals of the country, to continue to involve all social partners in discussions on restructuring and to ensure parastatals are monitored against the goals of a developmental state.
It lists as pressures on policy ”the emergent black capitalist strata for whom privatisation offers a chance of private accumulation”.
”All too often what parades as ‘black economic empowerment’ is really personal enrichment at the expense of public property, and [is] effective black economic disempowerment.”
The SACP concludes that it is time to create a climate in the government, the ANC and the alliance in which ”serious and complicated challenges are discussed intelligently and soberly, without fear or favour”.