The South African Communist Party has slammed a document penned by Gauteng MEC for Finance Jabu Moleketi and former diplomat Josiah Jele attacking the party, calling it a ”modern form of rooigevaar”.
The SACP’s Mazibuko Jara said former apartheid leaders PW Botha and John Vorster ”must be turning in their graves since Moleketi and Jele are quoting them in full albeit with revolutionary phrase-mongering”.
Moleketi and Jele’s document released through the ANC’s structures last week, describes members of the SACP as ”wolves dressed in sheep’s skin” and ”ultra-leftists”.
The document is being viewed as part of a larger African National Congress leadership strategy of demonising and isolating the SACP ahead of its national conference next month.
An ANC Youth League member at the Limpopo party conference this weekend responded to the document by commenting that ”people are trying to demonise the SACP”.
In his opening speech at the ANC’s policy conference in September, President Thabo Mbeki lambasted ”ultra-leftists” in the ruling alliance, accusing them of collaborating with rightwingers.
In the past few weeks Mbeki and members of the Cabinet have attacked the anti-privatisation strike called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SACP and accused its leadership of propagating lies.
At the Limpopo ANC conference over the weekend, ANC national chairperson Mosuioa Lekota joined the ANC leadership chorus in mocking the anti-privatisation stance.
A similar line is also echoed in the Moleketi-Jele document: ”Among the lies it [the ultra-left] tells, is that the democratic state has embarked on large-scale privatisation of state assets, with the aim to strengthen the bourgeoisie. No such large-scale privatisation has taken place or is planned.”
The document claims: ”The truth is that a section of the historic socialist stream in our country has, in recent years, associated itself with and espoused the favourite positions of the right. Many of its most prominent leaders and activists have willingly lent their voices to the strengthening of this right wing. All the while, they have dressed themselves in red clothes, even as they vigorously pursued a blue agenda.”
Jara said: ”Typical of a rooigevaar strategy, the document flounders, blasts, distorts, froths in order to divert attention away from the real issues — nurturing and fostering the unity of the alliance, eradicating poverty and creating employment.”
Moleketi and Jele claim that these ultra-left forces lodged within the SACP seek to build a ”popular movement” led by the SACP and Cosatu, without the ANC.
Their document says the ultra-left also seeks ”to transform the ANC into a ‘proletarian organisation’, excluding other sections of the population” and ”to use South Africa as a base for the launching of a global ‘proletarian struggle’ for the defeat of capitalism, and therefore cooperates with other ultra-left tendencies throughout the world”.
The ”ultra-left tendency”, claims the document, presents ”itself as the genuine voice” of the SACP and has rejected the path of fundamental Marxism-Leninism adopted by Communist Party icons such as Moses Kotane.
Moleketi and Jele explain that there are two strategies within the liberation movement — revolutionary democracy as adopted by the ANC and revolutionary socialism, followed historically by the SACP.
However, a faction within the SACP has given up on the path of scientific socialism. The authors say that this faction has decided ”that it wanted the SACP to transform itself into an opponent of the ANC — the opposition in red”.
The Moleketi-Jele document echoes thoughts expressed in another 50-page document circulated within ANC structures earlier this year. That document was entitled An opposition dressed in red and spoke about an alleged left-wing agenda to undermine the ANC-led government. It included perceived ”ultra-leftist” speeches by Cosatu president Willie Madisha, the federation’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, National Union of Mine-workers general secretary Gwede Mantashe and Cosatu deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali.
Jara said: ”The SACP is very much a party of Moses Kotane — we are South African communists involved right here and now with the reality of South African people.”
Kotane himself had to deal with ”conservatives who overturned SACP stalls. Like him, the SACP today will build a strong and working class biased ANC,” said Jara.
The SACP is expected to draw up a more comprehensive response to the Moleketi-Jele document when its central committee meets later this month.