The Young Communist League (YCL) on Thursday accused the leadership of the African National Congress of bullying and malice.
It also ”rejects with contempt the insinuation” by the ANC’s national working committee that the YCL was being funded by unnamed foreign donor agencies.
”The insinuation is littered with malice, rumour-mongering and is without substance,” the YCL said in a media statement.
”… this qualifies our statement that the ANC is intolerant of debates and criticism. The response is vintage ANC [and] reminiscent of previous tactics of bullying alliance partners each time there are debates that seek to constructively build the alliance,” the YCL added.
The YCL was responding to the ANC national working committee response to a South African Communist Party (SACP) discussion paper on the future of the tripartite alliance between the African National Congress, the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
The response, titled Does the Alliance Share Common Objectives?, was given at a bilateral ANC national working committee-SACP politburo meeting on Monday.
According to news reports the ANC, in a document prepared by party strategist Joel Netshitenzhe, asked whether it was time for the alliance to end.
The response also accused the communists of misreading history, questioned the integrity of the party’s leadership and called the SACP document ”subjective”.
The SACP discussion document asserts President Thabo Mbeki has overly centralised both the ANC and the state, in effect creating an imperial presidency — an epithet last attached to apartheid-era ruler PW Botha.
The party and Cosatu also said that the current leadership of the ANC had marginalised the SACP and Cosatu and turned its back on the working class in favour of technocrats and big business.
The SACP on Tuesday said the ANC’s response amounted to a debate through innuendo and insinuations.
This was foreign to the ”traditions of comradely debates within our movement, and it doesn’t do the image of all our formations, individually and collectively, any good”.
The SACP also rejected as unfounded and untruthful allegations about mysterious ”donor agencies” funding the campaigns of the YCL.
”The campaigns of the YCL are funded from the same pool of funds raised by the SACP, principally through its membership levies and our collective fundraising campaigns. The YCL is not funded by any donor agency,” the SACP said at the time.
The YCL on Thursday also expressed concern about reports that the SABC had ”banned” certain commentators from the airwaves because of their perceived bias. — Sapa