The South African Communist Party (SACP) elected new office bearers at its 12th yearly national congress in Port Elizabeth on Friday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The party re-elected Blade Nzimande as its general secretary, and Jeremy Cronin remains his deputy.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula was replaced by former National Union of Mineworkers boss Gwede Mantashe as national chairperson.
Mantashe, who chairs the technical working group of the government’s Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition, was elected unopposed. His election of Mantashe had been expected.
Former Eastern Cape social development minister Ncumisa Kondlo, now an African National Congress MP, replaces Dipuo Mvelase as Mantashe’s deputy.
Pumulo Masaulle, another former Eastern Cape minister, takes over from the suspended Philip Dexter as the party’s treasurer.
The election of the 25 members of the central committee will take place on Saturday and the results announced on Sunday. Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi has already indicated that he is not available for re-election.
This could mean that Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils will be the only Cabinet minister on the central committee. However, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe is under pressure to stand.
The congress has been marked by the absence of many Cabinet ministers who are members of the SACP — including Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin — reflecting the unhappiness of party members with aspects of government policy.
Fraser-Moleketi was recently involved in a bruising showdown with the public-sector unions that led to a three-week strike.
Alliance
At the congress, the SACP leadership has signalled it wants to stay allied to the ruling ANC rather than contest elections independently, as proposed by some of its members.
Disenchantment with the centrist, pro-market policies of President Thabo Mbeki has fuelled support among the SACP rank-and-file for a split from the coalition that has governed since the end of white minority rule in 1994.
A proposal to run a separate slate of candidates in the 2009 elections was put forth at the congress but quickly sidelined by the SACP’s powerful central committee, which recommended that no action be taken.
Nzimande dismissed the idea as something favoured by the country’s business elite, who would like to see government policy even less influenced by communists and the country’s powerful trade-union movement.
”These are ideologues who reduce politics to the marketplace of election-day choice,” he said on Thursday in a speech to delegates at the congress in Port Elizabeth.
”Those who were nowhere to be seen during decades of struggle now preach to the SACP about having the ‘courage to stand on its own’,” he said, according to a text of the speech.
Although the party’s membership has ballooned to about 50 000 in the past five years, SACP leaders have questioned whether it would have the resources and support to remain a vibrant force in the political arena.
Through its alliance with the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, SACP officials sit in the Cabinet as well as on the ANC’s national executive committee, the party’s top decision-making body. — Sapa