The spirit of the purge is stalking the organised left — and it grows out of the iron determination of a handful of leaders to entrench Jacob Zuma as South Africa’s next president.
Last week the Mail & Guardian reported that the South African Communist Party planned to axe two senior Cape Town members for daring to criticise undemocratic practices at the party’s congress last year and suggesting that it is obsessed with “individuals” (read Zuma) to the detriment of its professed role as the party of the working class. They follow a string of other victims of the SACP’s purge mentality in recent years, including former treasurer Phillip Dexter and Gauteng secretary Vishwas Satgar.
The irony is that when members complain about the Stalinist tendencies of leaders such as Blade Nzimande, the leaders corroborate the criticism by responding like Stalinists. Old habits in the SACP, which once kissed the arse of the Soviet Union’s “man of steel”, clearly die hard.
Under the leadership of fanatical Zuma-ite Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu is taking the same route. An inquiry with restricted terms of reference under independent mediator Charles Nupen did indeed find the federation’s president, Willie Madisha, had broken an agreement with other office-bearers by speaking out of turn. In some ways Madisha has been his own enemy. But the fact is he has been the target of a protracted and single-minded campaign which Vavi has spearheaded, with the backing of Madisha’s enemies in the SACP, particularly Nzimande. The Nupen report was used as ammunition to axe him; no one is in any doubt that the underlying motive is his outspoken opposition to the left’s endorsement of Zuma, whom he does not consider a credible champion of workers’ interests. As we report today, other unionists who allowed themselves to be placed on Thabo Mbeki’s slate before the ANC’s Polokwane conference are also in the firing line.
The singular irony is that Zuma has repeatedly made statements about economic policy that are anathema to the union movement. Last week he committed the ultimate heresy by suggesting South Africa’s labour market should be deregulated — Cosatu branded Mbeki’s tentative moves in that direction as evidence that he is an IMF puppet. Yet it is on unionists and SACP members who question Zuma’s credentials that the axe falls.
The M&G would be the last to argue that trade unions should not meddle in politics. On many political issues, including Aids policy and Zimbabwe, Cosatu has played an honourable role. But it is becoming less and less clear what its sponsorship of Zuma, and efforts to stifle anti-Zuma sentiment, are all about. Ambition probably drives Nzimande, as it does the Zumaniacs of the ANC Youth League. But Vavi passed over the chance of a seat on the ANC national executive committee and publicly declared he does not intend joining government. Are we seeing the typical politician’s practice of defending discredited policies to the last ditch?
Given its history, the SACP’s behaviour is not surprising. But the purge reflex and the palace politics that lie behind it are completely alien to Cosatu’s democratic and freedom-loving traditions. It should return to its primary task of representing its members.
Apart hate rules …
The video that has turned our world upside down started like a whimsical fairy tale.
“Once upon a time the Boers lived happily here on Reitz until the day the less-advantaged discovered the word ‘integration’ in the dictionary,” said one of the white racists in Bloemfontein.
So the little snow-white dwarfs took it upon themselves to piss upon a nation in the making. The appalling scenes from the University of the Free State this week, the fights in Delft last week and the racist murders in Skielik last month show the demon of racism is alive and will continue to rear its head on the road to a non-racial democracy.
Race is often the genesis of our most painful tasks or otherwise a wayfarer alongside every major South African debate. At the heart of the Free State saga is what should be — 14 years after apartheid ended — a relatively simple staple of South African university life. Yet it is living together, or integration, that has fuelled the conflict. The reaction of most South Africans was one of outrage, shock and disbelief.
But why are we shocked? Why are we outraged every time there are racial incidents, as we so euphemistically call them? Will it last all of two weeks until we forget in our amnesiac South African way — until another killing, another humiliation?
Is it because we believe racism to be random rather than institutional? While the laws are there to address racism, the national conversation is absent. Clearly the law has to take its course where black people are “mistaken” for baboons and shot and our mothers are made to drink urine. But our public institutions of learning, where cultures meet for the first time, should be the primary centres for integration. Public education about institutions of recourse such as the Equality Courts and the Human Rights Commission is vital. At home we should teach our children the joys and beauty of non-racialism.
Unless we talk and teach we risk creating the space for populists like Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who clings to office on a ticket which claims he is the man “who will stand up to whites”.