Rapule Tabane spoke to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande about his continued support for President Jacob Zuma, his fight with Cosatu and the party’s views on nationalisation.
The SACP has been accused of being leaderless since you and other leaders joined government.
We have said that this matter is closed. It’s a decision of the SACP and we expect other alliance partners to respect it in the same way we would respect their decisions. It is not a decision we took lightly. We are not a Marxist Leninist nongovernmental organisation.
We are a political party that is interested in power to advance the interests of the workers and the poor. We took care that we did not weaken the capacity of the SACP. While the matter was initially raised honestly by our alliance partners, we are now becoming worried that it is a campaign by our detractors against the SACP and myself.
Your relationship with Cosatu seems to have deteriorated.
This is not a do-or-die matter, because we have to wage many bigger battles with Cosatu to drive the five priorities of the alliance and of government. The relationship is a special one that we must protect at all cost. We must close ranks and focus on the things that unite us. The fact that we spent the past decade fighting off attempts by the 1996 class project to put us under siege might have had the unintended consequences that we did not engage enough on tactical questions. Another mistake made was to assume that because we were in the trenches together, we were identical organisations. We are not. We are distinct but complementary organisations.
Cosatu and the SACP have clearly divergent views on the new growth path, for example.
It was not a strategic difference because we all agree that the NGP marks a significant shift in government thinking about the economy and job creation. But it has its weaknesses and we should work together to strengthen it. For example, there is no proper alignment between the NGP and the macro-economic policies of government. Our view is: don’t throw stones, but identify problems and work with them.
Your personal relationship with Zwelinzima Vavi also seems to have taken a knock.
(Nzimande laughs and shows us an SMS he sent to Vavi on Wednesday, which is about football.)
This whole thing is a media creation. Nothing has changed. We are in constant contact. It is obviously not the same as before I went to government. But we recognise that the situation of the parties we lead is bigger than the people who lead the organisation. We inherited these organisations and we have to preserve them.
Cosatu and the SACP also differ on nationalisation.
We have said that we don’t believe this call for nationalisation is genuine, but is there just to bail out some black economic empowerment people and their debt. We believe in the socialisation of the means of production, which means the public owns the means of production, whereas nationalisation means the state owns it on behalf of the people. But nationalisation can be a key to socialisation. As communists, we have to ask questions about who is going to benefit. We also don’t support the practice that if you don’t support me, I will not elect you. It’s blackmail. We come from a tradition of debate.
But you give people labels, such as the “1996 class project” and “populist demagogues”, while debating. It’s not labels, but scientific analysis of a phenomenon. It’s a description of an existing tendency. It’s an old political practice to analyse so that you can come up with solutions.
Internally, the SACP brooks no dissent and expels more members than any other party I know of in South Africa.
That is not true. We are a very tolerant organisation, but no organisation would allow people to campaign in public against decisions democratically taken by structures. In fact, we have been very patient. There are people who are still in the Young Communist League who wanted to collapse its conference. It was out of order and we are not going to apologise for that. Maybe these are the unintended consequences of a party that is growing bigger. Some of those were liquidationist; they wanted to liquidate the party.
You and the party are seen as being all out in defence of President Jacob Zuma.
This is a media-created problem. This is our government. We brought it about and campaigned for it twice in elections in 2009 and 2011. We have a responsibility to ensure that it functions.
The media has created this criterion in which everyone who differs with Zuma is a hero and anyone who proposes ways to manage difference is a villain. What is critical is that we don’t allow the media to be the critical platform on which to engage one another. We can’t be changing leaders like handkerchiefs. You can’t say you want to change the leadership each time there are differences. What you should do is resolve the differences.
The SACP is 90 years old this year. What are its highlights?
We are proud of the role we played in bringing down the apartheid regime, in leading a number of mass campaigns, such as the campaign that resulted in banking for the poor and their protection through the National Credit Act, and we started the debate on the willing-seller, willing-buyer issue on land. We have also grown membership from 3Â 000 in 1990 to the current 130Â 000.