It has been the Mail & Guardian‘s view always that the South African Communist Party has more historical credibility than any other opposition party. Its positive influence on the country’s history is undeniable and its policy positions and leaders must be taken seriously. It is the future of the SACP we worry about.
Undeniably, the party is passing through a phase of Stalinist intolerance. While its leaders denounce those who suggest it has purged senior communists who have dared raise their voices, the evidence is clear.
Treasurer Phillip Dexter was axed for writing a scathing critique of general secretary Blade Nzimande; Vishwas Satgar, the former provincial secretary of Gauteng, resigned after being savaged for raising his voice about the party’s direction.
Former spokesperson Mazibuko Jara was similarly marginalised for writing a paper that questioned the party’s one-track support for Jacob Zuma. The Gauteng Young Communist League has been disbanded.
And let’s not forget that SACP publisher Dale McKinley also lost his job for daring to question the leadership publicly.
The party has a rationale for each purge. But, taken together, there is clearly a problem with tolerance and openness — and communists must address it at their conference this weekend.
At the centre of the dispute is the future of Jacob Zuma. A double irony is that while the debate about the ANC deputy president is seen to have opened space in the ruling ANC, it has closed down debate in the SACP.
Like his foe, President Thabo Mbeki, who has presided over the breakdown in discipline of a 95-year-old movement, Nzimande has allowed Zuma — not an SACP veteran by any means — to divide his ranks.
What the party should really be focusing on is forging an independent political future for itself; Young Turks in the party believe the time is ripe to go it alone. It might not win state power immediately, but it could capitalise on grass roots discontent with South Africa’s growing wealth gap.
Yet the party’s leadership seems intent on clinging like a koala bear to its ANC ally. This week deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin said the SACP should continue to field candidates as part of the ruling party’s lists, but wanted communist speaking time in legislatures.
The SACP uses the entitlements of office to keep its provincial offices afloat; it has said publicly that it encourages provincial chairpersons and office-bearers to seek public office so that the cash-strapped party does not have to pay salaries.
These are displays of political and organisational weakness that the party is failing to tackle as it descends into internal conflict. It’s time for the fighting to stop and for the party to start contesting power in its own right.
Out, Jumbo, out
There is an elephant in the room as the country debates the crime statistics released by the South African Police Service last week. And his name is Jackie Selebi.
South Africa is in the middle of a crime spike. The most violent, invasive crimes apparently remain resistant to intervention. These include murder, burglary, armed robbery, rape and other sexual offences.
Writing in the Business Day on Thursday, Institute of Security Studies researcher Anthony Altbeker suggests that Selebi’s excuse — that most crime is social and committed by people who know one another and therefore requires a social, rather than policing, solution — is not quite true.
There is every indication that the criminal classes are becoming bolder. The bomb attacks on bank ATMs, the hijackings at boomed intersections, the lawlessness, suggest a growing imperviousness to authority. How has this happened in a country with such a high ratio of police to citizens?
The fact that Selebi is fighting crime with his back to the wall is certainly one reason. With our crime rates, we need a police commissioner with high political credibility and even greater public trust.
Selebi has neither. The National Prosecuting Authority is investigating him and President Thabo Mbeki is deeply embarrassed by him, but is afraid to act because Selebi might flip-flop into Jacob Zuma’s camp.
Public trust in Selebi is low after a string of exposés — not only in the M&G — of his range of unsavoury relationships. Increasingly, South Africans speak of their police chief not with pride or trust, but in a “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” tone.
What has this to do with crime? Everything. While his deputies are given to shows of force to protect his name, the shenanigans of crime-fighters like Ekurhuleni police chief Robert McBride and others indicate that they also consider themselves accountable to no one and fear no higher authority.
The complaints before the Independent Complaints Directorate show McBride is not an aberration, but a trend. Last week an Alexandra police captain told The Times newspaper that she had not started looking for a missing child because the township was too large.
One year on we wait patiently for the president to tell us how he plans to deal with the allegations against Selebi. A year since police last reported to the citizenry, violent crime appears to be getting worse.
Isn’t it time to evict the elephant?