A split in the alliance between the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions will ”seriously” damage South Africa at this point, the SACP’s deputy general secretary warned on Tuesday.
”I think fragmentation of the alliance and contesting elections independently … wouldn’t be good for South Africa,” Jeremy Cronin told the Cape Town Press Club.
”I think we’re still a society that is potentially very fragmented [and] there are serious dangers of alienation and marginalisation.”
Cronin said calls for the party to ”go it alone” and split from the tripartite alliance were linked to dissatisfaction and irritation with the ruling ANC.
This is also the reason many communists, and particularly young communists, are supporting former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Cronin said there is growing class inequality in South Africa.
”Significant numbers of people have benefited … from new [post-1994] realities, but large numbers of people have marginally benefited, if at all, and many find themselves in worse predicaments, [with] HIV/Aids, unemployment and so on.”
South Africans need to try and understand this ”sea of grievance”, and why it has attracted, around Zuma, a ”populist and … demagogic mobilisation”.
What is needed is a decent set of policies and programmes to address the grievances.
Talk of a split is linked to a ”general climate of irritation that is prevailing, which links also to the Zuma mobilisation”.
”I think this ‘we’re going to go it alone’ is linked to that irritation with the ANC. Some of the irritation is completely legitimate, in my view, but I think it’s grasping at the wrong resolutions.
”The right resolutions are to … contest the direction of the ANC; to be critical of things that are wrong; to be supportive of things that are good; and, to try to maintain the broad comradely unity of the ANC and not to factionalise it around presidential candidates, or around elections, or whatever.
”I don’t think [the SACP] will do particularly well out of contesting elections on its own, and I think that South Africa will be damaged seriously if our political system splinters and fragments.”
Cronin said the SACP supported Zuma, like the ANC did.
”Our formal position is that he’s a leader of the ANC, he’s a former member of the SACP — he left in 1990 — and, obviously, he’s in a serious predicament and obviously we don’t abandon individuals.
”But … we’re not supporting him as a candidate for presidency. We’re deeply concerned about some of the things that have been said by him, or by his supporters and so forth.
”But it’s no secret that many communists, and particularly lots of young communists, are supporting Zuma. Not just in some broad, general humane kind of way, but politically and presidentially. I think it’s wrong.
”But I think that what accounts for it is a climate of grievance and irritation, which I think is quite a profound problem in our society.”
Cronin said the SACP examined a variety of scenarios at its last congress related to how it could fight elections under its own banner, but there was no talk of breaking the alliance.
These scenarios would be the focus of debate at the party’s next congress, at the end of next year, at which point ”some sort of decision” would be made.
”My view is I think this would be foolhardy, for many reasons … to think that you can do this [contest elections independently] and somehow preserve a warm and friendly alliance … is Utopian.
”The problem is our core constituencies are exactly the same,” Cronin said. — Sapa