Rapule Tabane (“The strident tune of a one-man band“, July 29) has got it wrong. The South African Communist Party (SACP) is celebrating its 90th anniversary, not the 13-year leadership of current general secretary Blade Nzimande.
Even if Tabane’s article was meant to be a review of the period of Nzimande’s leadership of the party, it is rather one-sided and skewed. Does he really believe that the SACP can be reduced to a one-man band? That powerful figures such as SACP chairman Gwede Mantashe, deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin and trade union leaders in the SACP central committee, such as Sdumo Dlamini, Frans Baleni, Senzeni Zokwana and Fikile Majola, are Nzimande stooges? Now really!
As with all organisations, we’ve had intermittent tensions within our ranks. We have sought to address them politically and it is only when these engagements have failed that disciplinary processes have been initiated. Even then, the disciplinary processes have been slow and long drawn-out. Most began at lower levels of the SACP before they reached the national level. They were considered by the national disciplinary committee, which made recommendations to the central committee, which took the final decisions.
It is the central committee, not the general secretary, that decides on expulsions. Likewise, it is the central committee, not the general secretary, that decides on the disbandment of any SACP structures.
Almost every central committee member has spoken when these decisions came before him. There were robust discussions but significant consensus on the decisions. So it is not as if Nzimande comes to the central committee with names of people he wants out and the committee meekly caves in. We regret that these decisions had to be made and that we lost members, but in most cases it was at the end of a long road.
Tabane’s article is based on several inaccuracies and his method is flawed: he reduces the past 10 years of the SACP, including the successes he refers to, to its general secretary’s behaviour and personal attitudes. Yes, individual leaders have been very important to our party but it is collective agents who have shaped the SACP’s history, particularly the struggles of the working class and its allies, which the SACP, of course, has also shaped in turn.
Tabane’s preoccupations with Nzimande distract him from a useful overview of the SACP’s history. He says nothing about the SACP being the first nonracial organisation in the country. Neither does he refer to the outstanding role of the party in building the country’s trade union movement. And what about the SACP’s internationalism, which has stood out? The party also played a major role in the armed struggle.
The SACP has contributed significantly to the theory of the South African revolution and constantly analysed global and domestic developments as a guide to action, at times not just for the socialist but also for the national democratic movement as a whole. It produced many brave, far-sighted, outstanding leaders who served the national liberation movement as a whole, including Moses Kotane, Joe Slovo, Yusuf Dadoo, Chris Hani, Dora Tamana and Ray Alexander.
The SACP, unlike other communist parties, adapted theoretically, strategically and organisationally to the new conditions following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and has grown enormously — it has more than 127 000 members now. With such a mass base and the SACP’s growing power and increasing access to the state, some of the tensions within our ranks are inevitable; some are similar to those afflicting other structures of the national democratic movement. To reduce them to the SACP general secretary’s personal whims is simplistic.
The fault lines that have sometimes appeared in the SACP in the past decade are related to a number of underlying objective realties confronting progressive forces in our country and globally.
If Tabane had begun to engage with these, he might have helped all of us to think and debate in a more constructive way.
Of course, the SACP has made mistakes. A party of activism invariably does. But, overall, it has made a significant contribution to this country. It has been constantly written off but here it is today, against all odds, stronger and more powerful than ever. That surely is remarkable and that surely is the main point as it celebrates its 90th year.
Yunus Carrim and Ben Martins are SACP politburo members. Martins is chairman of the national disciplinary committee