The SACP reaffirms the strategic correctness of the Freedom Charter’s clarion call for higher education and technical training to be made accessible to all, and condemns liberal neo-fascism

SACP GP strongly condemns the liberal neo-fascist scapegoating, opportunism and malicious slander of SACP General Secretary and Minister of Higher Education and Training, Comrade Blade Nzimande by one Eusebius McKaiser

On Monday, 19 October 2015, Mr McKaiser published an article in the commercial media, literally isolating and personally holding “liable”, Comrade Blade for the current but systemic crisis of fees in institutions of higher learning which is an outcropping of deeper structural processes of the economic history of our country and its consequences such as persisting high levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty. The crisis of sky-high fee increases is also a direct result of the decisions taken by universities exercising their institutional autonomy in terms of which law the Minister of Higher Education and Training is prevented to make universities administrative and governance decisions. 

The SACP welcomes constructive and objective criticism on any leader irrespective of their position, but Mr McKaiser's venom and vicious slander of Comrade Blade borders on liberal neo-fascism. This dangerous tendency individualises society-wide structural problems by moving focus away from the systemic causes and drivers of problems and can endanger the life of a person targeted as a scapegoat through the spread of poisonous malice.  

SACP is deeply dismayed that consistent with a liberal neo-fascist logic applied and followed by McKaiser, Comrade Blade is scapegoated and personally portrayed as the "axis of evil" responsible for the historic and deep rooted problems of higher education in our country, dating back to many years of colonisation, colonialism of a special type and apartheid capitalist oppression.

McKaiser’s vitriol would no doubt please Hendrick Verwoed, a source of inspiration for the right-wing DA, which Mr MCkaiser still has to tell us whether he can vote for or not.

Verwoed would certainly dance and smile in his grave to hear McKaiser isolating to hang and dry, the Higher Education and Training Minister holding a portfolio in a state Department that is still in its formative stages.

Verwoed would be pleased to hear that Comrade Blade is single-handedly blamed for the deep-rooted, historic and persisting colonial legacy in education, proudly engineered by Verwoed himself as part of oppression and apartheid fascism.

The SACP is not shocked that Mr McKaiser, in his venomous attack against Comrade Blade, vulgarised and slandered Marxism-Leninism; for McKaiser is a liberal neo-fascist.

McKaiser's liberal neo-fascist outlook clearly exposes close resemblance of his narrative and logic with that of Hitler, of scapegoating and blaming communists and Jews as the "source of all evil" for the economic problems that faced Germany at that time.

SACP applauds comrade Blade, that in the midst of this liberal neo-fascist onslaught, he did not adopt a messianic posture, seeking to define himself outside the policy framework of the collective of the ANC government.

Students and student leaders did not isolate and personally attack Comrade Blade and apportion blame on him for the decisions that have independently been made by the management and leadership of their universities. The SACP applauds this show of clarity by the students as opposed to McKaiser’s liberal neo-fascist outlook. Unlike McKaiser’s populist petty bourgeois slanderer, student leaders called for government intervention and support and the government is accordingly responding.

This is because students correctly understands the dialectical relationship and complementary role between their mass struggles and that of the Department of Higher Education as an organ of state under the ANC government.

Whilst we support this principled struggles against unilateralism by the management and councils of learning institutions, as the SACP we strongly condemn the use of violence, just as comrade Blade Nzimande and President Jacob Zuma correctly did. The SACP is happy that the overwhelming majority of students are against violence and did not engage in it.

SACP Gauteng is deeply concerned that the liberal neo-fascist lumpenism advocated by McKaiser, definitely leaning on the shoulders of monopoly capital, seeks to drive a wedge between student leaders and their revolutionary government.

In this regard, McKaiser as the wedge driver and champion of divide and rule “par excellence”, conveniently forgets that the role of government and its effective intervention is deeply constrained by entrenched and legislated principles of institutional autonomy.

The SACP welcomes the resolutions of the ANC National General Council on higher education, and further calls for the urgent review of the principles of institutional autonomy to create conditions for decisive intervention in universities and colleges by the democratic state.

The SACP calls for the review of the higher education funding formula and the entire  funding framework to establish decisive revenue generation polices to place funding of higher education on the door step of monopoly capital and the ruling classes. The National Treasury must play its leading role in this area in the interest of ensuring that the Higher Education and Training Department is allocated sufficient resources to make higher education and technical training accessible to all on the basis of merit as declacred in the Freedom Charter 60 years ago.  

It is only through a profound policy shift, which must be properly canvassed in the SACP and the entire ANC led-Alliance that we can bring an end this liberal neo-fascist slander and isolationist tendency.

As for the liberal neo-fascist McKaiser, we wish him well as he takes his rightful place deep in the dustbin of history, side by side with many anti-communist elements that have always sought to isolate and slander communists.

We have no doubt that Mr McKaiser will go down in history as a new source of amusement for the mocking birds.

We are not surprised that this petty bourgeois slanderer attacks against Comrade Blade in the period following SACP's Red October Campaign to fight monopoly capital's dominance and elitist ownership of the commercial mass media.

Issued by Jacob Mamabolo, SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary, 20 October 2015