Nzimande: SACP wil fight purge of its members by government

Delivering the Joe Slovo memorial lecture in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday, Nzimande said the SACP was under threat from many quarters. He cited the recent killings of SACP members in Inchanga near Durban and the removal of James Nxumalo as eThekwini mayor and Chris Ndlela as Msunduzi mayor last year as examples of the purge.

“Why were Chris and James removed from their positions when they were doing such good work? We have never been furnished with explanations on such decision,” Nzimande said.

He suggested that the main reason for their axing was that they belonged to the SACP and were senior members of the party in KwaZulu-Natal. The alliance between the African National Congress, the SACP, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), and the SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) needed to be reformed if it was to meet current problems and avoid the risk of collapsing.

Deployment of members to public office should not be concentrated in the ANC or a single individual. “When we are campaigning during the elections we come out in numbers conducting door-to-door campaigns in a bid to ensure an ANC victory. It cannot be that when such a goal has been achieved we have a chairperson who has all these powers to determine who becomes a councillor or goes to Parliament,” Nzimande said.

He said the SACP was aware the phones of some of its leaders were being tapped and questioned the motive behind this. “We need to say it clear that we know that our phones are tapped by some in the intelligence services and we want to know why this is so.” He warned that the SACP would take action against this but did not divulge what form this would take.

Nzimande expressed concern at the functionality of the alliance, saying Joe Slovo would have been equally worried about how the direction of the struggle was being threatened by the way money was being used. He challenged SACP members to play their part in protecting the image of the movement, citing 2017 as a crucial period in the history of the alliance.

“We are all members of the ANC and can use 2017 to build or tear the movement apart so that by the time we get to the conference in December all that is left is a shell. It is up to us,” Nzimande said. But, the SACP would rather spend much of 2017 working on uniting the ANC so that the December ANC elective conference became a formality. However, he questioned whether this was still possible in the current climate of infighting in the ANC.

Cosatu and Sanco also expressed concern at developments in the ANC, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, and specifically the Moses Mabhida region in the Midlands.

Sanco leader Zanele Hlatshwayo said ANC branch meetings were held secretly in order to eliminate other card carrying members. “In my branch the nomination process was conducted via a WhatsApp chat and we only got to know about this when the process was over. This is not how things are done in the ANC.” This had allowed the leadership to “parachute” councillors who were not popular within the electorate, often resulting in protests similar to those witnessed ahead of the 2016 local government elections.

Cosatu leaders said the axing of over 1000 workers at the Msunduzi municipality in December was a further illustration of an ANC-led council unsympathetic to the plight of the working class.