In ”A bigot with his eye on the Cabinet?” in the Mail & Guardian of August 19, Drew Forrest attacked the SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande.
Forrest raises nothing of substance against Nzimande. His article is a repeat of unsubstantiated allegations aimed at projecting him as corrupt and undemocratic. The M&G published this tirade without providing Nzimande with an opportunity to respond. It interviewed Phillip Dexter and ”one SACP insider”, but denied Nzimande the right to reply to these baseless allegations.
In an attempt to smear him, the M&G alleges he was ”disappointed by his exclusion from [Thabo] Mbeki’s Cabinet in 1999”. Any self-respecting journalist would know that Nzimande was elected SACP general secretary in 1998 and declined nomination to Parliament, so he was not available for deployment to Cabinet in 1999. How could he be bitter?
It is alleged Nzimande inflated the membership figures of the SACP. To achieve what? We have on several occasions invited the M&G to our offices to do a manual count of our membership forms. Last July, we took the M&G‘s Vicky Robinson through our membership system to show how it works and why Dexter’s comments were irrelevant. But the M&G repeats the allegation.
Dexter, we are told, was ”stripped of the membership-accounting function and the report was tabled according to Nzimande’s wishes”. The SACP’s constitution shows that membership is not the responsibility of the national treasurer. Clause 13,5 of the constitution states that it is a duty of treasurer ”under the direction of the central committee [to] present the audited financial statements and written financial reports to the congress”. So office-bearers have to table reports approved by the central committee, not individual reports.
Why, since July 2007, has the M&G taken such a stance against Nzimande? Could it be that the M&G is so embedded with its source, a disgruntled SACP member, that it cannot be objective? Has its refusal to attend any of our press briefings made it blind to the truth?
The M&G has become useful to those who are worried about the growing influence of the working class and the poor on ANC policies. The idea is to isolate the general secretaries of the SACP and Cosatu as problematic individuals in the so-called ”Zuma camp”.
This anti-working-class agenda must be exposed. The class enemy has resorted to projecting the leadership of the SACP and Nzimande as corrupt, greedy, ambitious and undemocratic. What a shame that a previously respected left-wing paper has turned into a tool in the hands of those opposed to the radicalisation of the National Democratic Revolution!
Malesela Maleka is spokesperson of the SACP