ANC President Thabo Mbeki’s call to the South African Communist Party to carve out its own path and leave the ANC to its own devices has created a new dilemma for the SACP’s leadership, which is battling to contain a strong drive within the party for it to contest the elections on its own.
Addressing the ANC policy conference in Midrand on Wednesday, Mbeki told delegates: ”The ANC has never sought to prescribe to the SACP the policies it should adopt, the programmes of action it should implement and the leaders it should elect.”
As the ANC was not a socialist party pursuing a socialist revolution, the SACP should not try to tell the ANC what to do, said Mbeki.
Over the past two years the Young Communist League and some provinces have suggested that the party create a more independent identity and dispel a notion of a parasitic relation to the ANC, which is its alliance partner.
The SACP will hold its congress in two weeks in Port Elizabeth where it will decide whether to contest elections independently.
On Wednesday Nzimande told dele-gates at the congress of health workers’ trade union Nehawu that ”the SACP is not and will never become a narrow electoralist formation. Our strategic objective in regard to state power is to secure not party political but working class hegemony over the state.”
An SACP politburo member who believes the party should contest the elections, said: ”It seems comrade Blade wants the SACP to continue being an appendage of the ANC, but a different ANC.
”That is why there is a suggestion that we postpone a decision on this matter until after the ANC conference in December. If we get the ANC leadership we want, we are fine. If we don’t, then we contest the elections, setting us up as opponents of the ANC.”
He said fears that the SACP was not ready to make a convincing electoral showing were misplaced. ”What would be the relevance of the SACP if we become hostage to these fears? At the moment none of our elected representatives can stand up in Parliament and say that, as the SACP, we disagree on this or that point – since they go there on an ANC mandate.
”We can’t remain the organisation of another organisation. We need to know whether the society supports us. How do we test the response of the South African public if we don’t actually contest?”
SACP members have been frustrated by those party leaders who have openly supported motions in the National Assembly rejected by the central committee, such as the legislation on cross-border municipalities.
SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka said the party wanted the tripartite alliance reconfigured in such a way that SACP members deployed by the ANC to legislatures first accounted to the SACP.