President Thabo Mbeki hit back at SACP leader Blade Nzimande in a fiery retort at the party’s national executive committee last weekend. His response was that of a party man: he quoted several SACP and ANC historical documents to prove his points and disprove Nzimande’s. In 2006, Nzimande has upped the ante against Mbeki and has pushed, in various speeches, for a return of the ANC to a left or socialist orientation. This is Mbeki’s edited speech to the NEC — a fight back against increasingly strident criticism from the ANC’s allies on the left. Mbeki started his riposte by quoting from Nzimande’s speech to Cosatu’s ninth congress in September
‘There was once a common shared perspective around the imperative of a socialist orientation within the national democratic revolution. In the last decade and a half this has ceased to be a shared and unifying perspective among the leadership of our movement, and we [the SACP] view this as a strategic rupture. A dominant (but not unchallenged) group within our movement argue that the key strategic task of our liberation movement is to manage capitalism. [Nzimande then went on to lament that only ”capitalist ideology” is taught at schools and sketched a scenario of the leadership the ANC needed in 2007.]
”It must be a leadership that, when confronted with the realities of debate in the alliance, must not fall into the habit of questioning the integrity of its allies, carelessly tossing about divisive labels like ‘ultra-left’.
”We want to see the emergence of a confident, collective ANC leadership not threatened by internal debates within the alliance.
”Most importantly, we would like to see emerging from the ANC policy conference a thorough policy review, and a commitment to economic and other policies that emerge from a participatory process, that will primarily benefit the workers and the poor, and that will depend upon the mobilisation of popular forces working with our democratic state for their implementation.”
Contrary to Blade Nzimande’s extraordinary arrogance, which leads him openly to despise our movement, the 2002 constitution of the SACP lays down an approach towards fraternal organisations whose spirit and intent Nzimande clearly does not respect. This constitution says: ”[SACP] members active in fraternal organisations or in any sector of the mass movement have a duty to set an example of loyalty, hard work and zeal in the performance of their duties and shall be bound by the discipline and decisions of such organisations and movement.
”They shall not create or participate in SACP caucuses within such organisations and movements designed to influence either elections or policies. The advocacy of SACP policy on any question relating to the internal affairs of any such organisations or movements shall be by open public statements or at joint meetings between representatives of the SACP and such organisations or movements.”
Even in its 1991 constitution, the SACP laid down one of its guiding principles as being: ”To participate in and strengthen the liberation alliance of all classes and strata whose interests are served by the immediate aims of the national democratic revolution. This alliance is expressed through the liberation front headed by the African National Congress.”
[Mbeki then goes on to attempt to show that the nature of the national democratic revolution was multi-class geared at the liberation of African people in particular and black people in general. He quotes from the ANC’s consultative conference of 1985, which said: ”The ultra-leftists who deny the validity of the national liberation character of our struggle objectively form part of the enemy’s counter-revolutionary offensive.”]
[Through several documents, Mbeki then traces the ANC’s commitment to the achievement of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist state. He does this ostensibly to show that the party did not have a socialist orientation. He then quotes from the Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994.]
‘The fundamental principles of our economic policy are democracy, participation and development. We are convinced that neither a commandist central-planning system nor an unfettered free-market system can provide adequate solutions to the problems confronting us. Reconstruction and development will be achieved through the leading and enabling role of the state, a thriving private sector, and active involvement by all sectors of civil society, which, in combination, will lead to sustainable growth.”
To put the matter in its stark reality without any equivocation or diplomacy or pursuit of ”unity at all costs”, the strategic proposals conveyed by comrade Nzimande, ostensibly on behalf of the SACP, whether intended or not, amount to a serious provocation that would result in the:
l liquidation of the SACP and the defeat of a genuine left agenda, among other things by shifting the tasks of the socialist revolution on to the shoulders of the ANC;
l 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”; and
l the consequent capture of political power by the combined forces of domestic and international counter-revolution, which remain determined to limit and frustrate the potential of the revolution to serve the interests of the masses of the working people in country, in the rest of Africa and the wider world.
We must engage in a determined ideological and political campaign within the movement to educate our membership of the serious danger posed by these positions. At all times, we must pose the question — whose interests do these positions serve?