President Thabo Mbeki has accused South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande of ”extraordinary arrogance”, it emerged on Sunday.
It was this which had led him to ”openly despise” the African National Congress, Mbeki noted in his political overview to the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting held over the weekend.
Nzimande clearly did not respect the spirit and intent of the approach towards fraternal organisation as laid down in the SACP constitution, Mbeki told the meeting.
His notes were circulated to the media at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg on Sunday, during a press conference on the outcome of the NEC’s regular meeting in Kempton Park on Friday and Saturday.
Quoting from addresses by Nzimande, Mbeki wrote that he had spoken of a ”strategic rupture” in the national democratic revolution’s (NDR) shared perspective around a socialist imperative.
A dominant group was arguing that the key strategic task of the liberation movement was to manage capitalism.
Nzimande told the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union’s recent congress: ”It is a shame that much as South Africa was liberated by a movement whose strategy and tactics was informed by this philosophical outlook, only capitalist ideology is taught in our schools.”
The SACP’s view was that a capitalist-orientated NDR ceased to be an NDR as it was ”hopelessly incapable” of addressing underdevelopment and poverty.
Nzimande has, meanwhile, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation he stood by ”every word, sentence or comma” in his addresses.
He described it as ”very unfortunate” that the leader of the alliance could ”make such remarks without by any means trying to engage us”.
ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama denied that Mbeki’s remarks amounted to an attack on Nzimande.
”Rather, I would say, it’s a frank, open discussion that the ANC is having with its allies in response to frank statements directed to the ANC,” he said.
”There is absolutely no combativeness… There is no acrimony.”
Ngonyama also reiterated that there was ”no split in the alliance”.
”We agree on some issues; we disagree on some issues,” he said. There was ongoing lobbying for position. ”It’s not going to change.”
In his notes, Mbeki said that ”to put the matter in its stark reality without any equivocation or diplomacy or pursuit of ‘unity at all costs”’, Nzimande’s strategic proposals, ”ostensibly on behalf of the SACP, whether intended or not, amount to a serious provocation…”
Shifting the tasks of the socialist revolution onto the shoulders of the ANC would result in the liquidation of the SACP and the defeat of a genuine left agenda, Mbeki told the NEC.
It could also lead to the destruction of the ANC and the rest of the democratic movement by provoking them to attempt a socialist transformation based on the thesis that ”imperialism is not invincible”.
The ANC was in the process of formulating a new strategy and tactics document. It covered, among other things, the character of the ANC and its programme of national democratic transformation.
A basic framework for the document was presented to the NEC, which noted that the emphasis, 13 years into democracy, should be ”more on issues pertaining to transformation of society”, said Ngonyama.
He said the NEC had expressed ”regret and disappointment” at the negative reception given to Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the Congress of South Africans Trade Unions’ recent conference.
Mbeki had voiced the embarrassment of not only the party, but the country at the bad reception he received while attending Heritage Day celebrations at Kingsmead with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
”No president would be happy when that happens. We have to condemn such actions,” said Ngonyama.
However, he emphasised that the ANC was ”on top of” the situation.
”We are dealing with it. We will deal with it wherever it rears its head,” he said, making particular reference to those who had shown the president disrespect at court hearings of former deputy president Jacob Zuma. – Sapa