The South African Communist Party (SACP) would not support particular candidates at the African National Congress (ANC) national conference later this month in Limpopo, SACP secretary general Blade Nzimande said on Sunday.
”The electoral contest within the ANC is an internal matter.”
However, Nzimande said the SACP believed things could not go on as they were within the ANC and between the ANC and its alliance partners.
”Either there must be a change in the ANC’s collective leadership or a change of heart in that leadership, he said.
Nzimande said a lot had changed in the style of the ANC’s leadership since 1996, much of it associated with the imposition of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy on the party, the alliance and the country.
”[Gear] is premised on the erroneous assumption that the government’s main mission is to facilitate capitalist growth regardless of the quality of that growth in order to be able to deliver [from] top-down some poverty alleviation measures.”
Nzimande called on ANC delegates to use the conference to elect a collective leadership willing and able to rebuild the ANC and help reconfigure the alliance as a dynamic political centre. — Sapa