Dumisani Makhaye, a member of the African National Congress’s national executive, savaged the top echelons of the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) this week.
He said they were trying to ”demobilise the ANC political leadership in the government from the president downwards” with the aim of building ”socialism now”.
Makhaye’s broadside came in a paper, Left Factionalism and the Democratic Revolution [MS word – 49K], to be published in Umrabulo, the ANC’s magazine.
It is the latest salvo in the crossfire between the right and left of the ruling alliance in the run-up to the ANC’s national conference.
Makhaye says most SACP and Cosatu members ”do not constitute part of the ‘left’ groupings” opposed to ”our movement”, who are striving to establish socialism.
He accuses the SACP and Cosatu groupings of mounting an offensive against decisions taken by the ANC’s leadership.
Makhaye’s article is similar in tone and content to President Thabo Mbeki’s speech at the ANC policy conference in September, where he attacked the ”ultra-left” and accused it of joining hands with ”right-wing” forces to undermine a democratically elected government.
It also echoes arguments presented in a recent document penned by Gauteng MEC for Finance Jabu Moleketi and former diplomat Josiah Jele, which also attacked the SACP.
Makhaye claims the left groupings ”have worked to isolate the Minister for Public Enterprises [Jeff Radebe], presenting him as the villain of the piece”.
Radebe had been held up as ”exclusively politically responsible for ‘privatisation’ informed by the state bureaucrats and technocrats”. The campaigns had led to Radebe’s removal from the SACP leadership at its congress this year.
Makhaye says the ”left” groupings are opposed to building the SACP as a ”vanguard party of the working class. They prefer that the Communist Party should remain a ‘mass party’.”
The leftists have admitted into the SACP ranks members ”who became disaffected with the ANC when they failed to gain elective positions in the ANC through our movement’s democratic processes”.
This had enabled the leftists to rely on ”the low level of socialist consciousness in the country to use all and sundry as part of their ‘left’ cadres”, Makhaye says.
He says few members of these groupings are ”able constructively to argue and propagate the cause of socialism. Nevertheless, they play a useful role in terms of shouting slogans, singing and toyi-toying for socialism. This is the human material that is used to build the SACP as a ‘mass party’.”
The left groupings portray the ANC membership as ”at best inadequate and at worst, bad”, he says.
Makhaye says they have worked to ”exclude and deny ANC political leadership, especially of the progressive trade union movement, to destroy the tradition built during the most difficult period of our struggle for national liberation”.