Renewed hostilities between the African National Congress and its left-wing allies are likely to fuel growing demands within the South African Communist Party for the party to stand independently in elections.
Support for the go-it-alone strategy grew at SACP provincial congresses this year, where it received majority support in six of its nine provinces. The Young Communist League is at the forefront of the argument that the party needs state leverage to implement its own programmes.
The strategy has been under debate since last year, but support is clearly growing at branch and regional level. Structures are reviewing whether the alliance with the ANC is the best vehicle for the SACP to achieve its aims.
The other alliance partner, Cosatu, this week raised concerns about the alliance being little more than “election machinery” to deliver votes for the ANC. The Mail & Guardian understands that some Cosatu affiliates have suggested that the union movement consider pulling out of the alliance.
Among communists there is unhappiness over ANC reluctance to drive SACP programmes such as land and bank reform.
In the current spat the SACP has been noticeably more supportive of its union ally, particularly on Zimbabwe. In the past, it has tended to play a more mediatory and peacemaking role in the alliance.
The party defended Cosatu’s Secretary General, Zwelinzima Vavi, in surprisingly vivid language. It said it was worried by ANC “interventions that are full of menace, threat, allusions to collaboration with outside forces, and personal ridicule”.
It would be wrong to predict the imminent fragmentation of the alliance, whose deeper resilience has withstood many tests in the past. Cosatu insisted this week that despite the writing of numerous obituaries over the past decade, the alliance was not in a terminal condition. Said Vavi: “We are not in the intensive care unit.”
However, a Cosatu report released this week underscored the federation’s unprecedented frustration and disillusionment (see accompanying story). It said that it was frustrated that alliance meetings had been postponed on so many occasions, and that the proposed alliance summit had failed to materialise this year.
Madisha said: “The whole country knows that the alliance has not been functioning properly for a number of years. The Zimbabwe and the black economic empowerment issue are a symptom of a bigger problem.”
Madisha emphasised that Cosatu was an independent organisation and was “not the labour desk of the ANC”.
“We will not turn the other cheek to be slapped. We will not allow ourselves to be kicked around,” he added.
Cosatu proposed an emergency alliance meeting this week to address its complaints. However, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe said in a television interview that he saw no need for such an encounter.
Motlanthe defended ANC head of Presidency Smuts Ngonyama, after Cosatu had questioned whether the latter was defending his own interests or speaking on the ANC’s behalf. Cosatu has been highly critical of Ngonyama’s involvement in the controversial Telkom black empowerment deal.
As the war of words escalated, Ngonyama hit back at Vavi as “a child in the alliance”, adding that his remarks were reckless and “toxic”.
The M&G has learnt that an alliance meeting had been scheduled for Tuesday but there are doubts about it happening given the volatile state of relations.
The dispute is a dramatic violation of the Ekurhuleni Declaration of the Alliance agreed upon by the three alliance members as well as the South African National Civics Organisation in 2002.
The declaration agreed on mechanisms to manage the tensions and avoid public discord.
“Our organisations though profoundly inter-dependent, are separate organisational formations with their own identities, policy-making mechanisms and internal organisational arrangements. In this regard, each component respects the independence of its allies.
“We do acknowledge that it would be artificial to expect tensions would not exist among and even within components of the alliance. The challenge is how to manage them within our constitutional structures and use them as catalysts for the growth and maturity of our organisations.” But there has been very little of that in the past week.