”Palace politics” are the biggest threat facing the national democratic revolution, South African Communist Party (SACP) secretary general Blade Nzimande said in Kempton Park on Tuesday.
”Like all palace politics, it is the politics of backstabbing, the pursuit of individual wealth, the use of state organs to settle factional scores, the use of media leaks to destroy each other and patronage as a means to consolidate political power,” he told delegates at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) central committee meeting.
”Palace politics are precisely political manoeuvres in the palace because they is characterised by political manoeuvres at leadership level to backstab each other and to smear each other in order to achieve narrow, personal and elite power, where the mass of our people are turned into spectators.
”The single biggest casualty of palace politics has been the increasing hollowing out of some of the dearest values that have built this movement of ours: open and frank comradely debate, service to the people without expectation of personal reward [and] loyalty to the movement without using one’s position to advance individual motives,” he said.
Nzimande said the responsibility for this situation lay with the leadership of the organisation and not the masses.
”To what extent have we fostered a leadership style in our movement that is intolerant of dissenting views, reinforced its power and control [and] tolerated if not encouraged conflation of private capital accumulation with public responsibilities?” Nzimande asked.
Nzimande said that the national democratic revolution was ”on trial”.
”Our revolution is on trial precisely because ours was never a struggle to merely replace a white elite with a black elite.
”Our revolution is on trial because in its early years our government formed a misinformed policy of tight monetary and fiscal policy that downsized the public service and followed a wholly inappropriate policy of Gear [growth, employment and redistribution ],” he said.
He also cautioned that the situation could deteriorate into one similar to Zimbabwe.
”Next door here in Zimbabwe … it’s all starting here with what we are seeing now,” he said.
He touched on the ”reconfiguration of the alliance”, saying it should not merely be treated as a boardroom discussion.
”Our ability to reconfigure the alliance rests on building working-class power on the ground, such that nothing can prevent such a reconfiguration …” he said.
He hardly mentioned the cash-donation saga that is threatening the position of Cosatu president Willie Madisha.
Madisha, meanwhile, sat stony-faced on the stage, flanked to his right by Defence Minister and African National Congress chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota.
Businessman Charles Modise recently asked police to look into a donation of R500 000 he said he gave to the SACP via Madisha. Madisha said he gave the money to Nzimande, which Nzimande has denied.
‘Corrective measures’
Madisha came under fire on Monday from his own executive for the way he handled the matter of a R500 000 ”donation” to the SACP.
The executive was particularly critical of the public statements he made on the issue, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said in Kempton Park on the East Rand.
”This includes his declaration that he will no longer make himself available for leadership positions in the federation or his union,” Vavi said.
”This announcement in the middle of this controversy was unfortunate, more so because it was never raised in the central executive committee (CEC).”
Vavi was briefing reporters on resolutions reached at a special CEC meeting in Kempton Park last week.
Another special CEC session to discuss ”corrective measures” would be held in November, he said.
”We are going to take corrective measures, and not punitive measures. We are not driven by vengeance, and we hope our movement is not exposed to any divisions.”
Vavi said Madisha and other national office-bearers of Cosatu would no longer make any public comments on the disappearance of the alleged cash donation.
The committee was concerned about how this matter was being handled at the public level.
”We don’t want this issue to cause division within Cosatu. We have noted the anxiety this whole saga has caused in our ranks and in the public discourse,” Vavi said.
”The matter is divisive and is a threat to Cosatu’s internal unity and cohesion.”
He said the Cosatu president had sworn that he handed over an amount of R500 000 to Nzimande, which he claimed to have received as a donation from Modise.
Nzimande has denied receiving the donation, while an SACP task team has found no credible evidence that the donation had ever existed.
”Who is lying and who is not? One of them is lying and we don’t know who. They both could be lying,” Vavi said.
He stressed that Madisha was not being gagged from speaking to the media but that the SACP task team would get ”to the bottom of these claims and counter-claims”. — Sapa