President Thabo Mbeki had struck ”a cheap and cowardly blow” against South African Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande, the Young Communist League told a news conference in Johannesburg on Monday.
The league’s secretary general, Buti Manamela, was responding to Mbeki’s speech to the ANC’s national executive committee meeting over the weekend.
YCL chairperson David Masondo called Mbeki a dictator.
Manamela said the YCL stood behind Nzimande’s call for the teaching of dialectical and historic materialism in schools, his commitment to the fight against HIV and Aids, the eradication of poverty and for a challenge to the ”bourgeoisification” of the ANC.
Mbeki called Nzimande ”extraordinarily arrogant” at the NEC meeting on Saturday, and said Nzimande’s attack on his leadership and the African National Congress amounted to serious ”provocation”.
Manamela said issues raised by Nzimande were contained in the SACP’s discussion document, compiled by the party’s central committee.
Manamela said: ”The attack on the general secretary is just a defence of this capitalist agenda driven by the ANC president and his spin doctors.”
He said the ”bourgeoisification” of the ANC was increasingly becoming dangerous for the country and the poor.
”It is this bourgeoisification that has also led to stealing of public resources to fund the Telkom deal of which the ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama was a key beneficiary.”
Mbeki had consistently continued to abuse ANC platforms to insult the integrity of the SACP and its leadership, Manamela said.
He said such a statement by the president proved their long-held belief that Mbeki was not committed to building the alliance.
”Instead of constructively engaging with alliance partners in bilateral or alliance meetings, he chooses to cowardly attack them in the absence of the SACP collective.”
He said both the ANC statement and Mbeki’s political overview sought to shift the blame of the crisis that the ANC was facing.
”The ANC president is trying to find a scapegoat in the SACP. He has created the crisis in the ANC, and people must not be diverted from this hard fact.”
Manamela said there were major problems facing the ANC and the country including land for the landless, transport, poverty and unemployment.
”Instead of the president identifying and dealing with these problems, and concentrating on uniting the ANC, he chose to divide it further and avoid the impact that the SACP has made through its campaigns.”
He called on Mbeki to exercise his leadership and resolve problems and divisions within the ANC.
”Otherwise the words of deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin of ‘Zanufication’ will become a reality,” Manamela said.
Asked by reporters what ”Zanufication” meant, YCL chairperson David Masondo responded: ”Like the party Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe, it is a process in which a liberation movement is bureaucratised. The leader becomes a dictator and no one disagrees with him or her.”
”The dictator [Mbeki] is trying to mobilise ANC members against the people who have been critical of his leadership.”
He said Mbeki’s response to Nzimande was his personal opinion.
”He reflected his own personal view and not that of the ANC.”
Masondo said the YCL was determined to march forward and ”fight against the dictator”. – Sapa