De Klerk's Diatribe on SACP is a Pantomime of Humpty-Dumpty
The utterances of former state President FW Klerk recently (25 July 2012) in a comity of unsavoury club of the miniscule oppositional grouping; such as Afriforum, FW De Klerk foundation, DA and Agri-SA cannot go uncontested. Lest they can be erroneously consumed as gospel truth.
De Klerk spent a lot in his speech to pooh-pooh at SACP. This trenchant deluge at SACP, its discomfit is not only an act of archetypical of him but, in the first instance, it is in the ad interim joust against DA and other naysayers of the ruling alliance; and scintillate itself on the solid political soil whose gambit is to scorch-earth each other as elitist lamenting racist minority groupings as a weighty voice.
In 15 December 2011 I wrote in ANC today about the rise of dangerous emergence of elitist lobby groupings who are hell-bent on meddling with the governance of this country and that article I said:
"It can only be those who are the most naive within our ranks who can lay claim to the rise of lobby groups, mainly but not exclusively, white by definition lobby groups as a mere innocuous development that pose no political threat to the revolution. This grouping, more emerging, and so noticeable in their strong oppositional postures, mostly wielding money to fund their way and having a strong voice that disgorges to the society an attention to listen, needs a special priority from the movement and the alliance as a whole.
They project themselves as a voice of reason, intellectually astute, morally beyond reproach and espousing all that Mandela represented in his Presidency and, therefore, pose themselves as paragons of this restoration thereby appealing to the conscious of all those who might be socially classified as middle class and politically blight to therefore join the defenders of Constitution and the moral fibre that, according to them, is waning under the current leadership of our government.
Never before after 1994 have we seen much activism and confidence from whites outside of the formal political parties like NNP, DP and Conservative Party. Even these parties' oppositional activities then were only within Parliament and Legislatures cautiously without standing on the way of democratization that the ANC was and is bringing about. Where does this resurgence, rejuvenation of this liberal confidence comes from?
This grouping which is stratified in various areas of interest has successfully co-opted within the black Africans those that are termed "voices of reasons" and people of "high moral compass" in their individual corners to use the power of a pen and powers of podiums to propagate a view of a black government that has degenerated to atrophy and trapped into a whirlpool of ignominy and a leadership that oscillate like a pendulum ball in hither and thither. This is the foci of what they inveigh against the current government in an obtuse impish insolence"
The DA recently chose a decoying route, abusing the announcement by government that they intend to introduce youth wage subsidy and the posture therefore, that, COSATU took against this policy proposal. The march towards COSATU house was, to all in intent and purposes, to project to the ordinary South Africans, the ANC in sotto voce and as an emasculated ruling party dictated to, in policy terms, by outside government allies as COSATU.
The pronouncement by Helen Zille that power lies in COSATU house not in Luthuli House was not an innocuous somnolent statement. It was a statement heavily pregnant and in its parlance, it intended to besmirch the ANC. It was an act of blackmailing the ANC to generate within itself a development of being cocky to its ally so that they therefore prove a point to the opposition that we are in charge, not COSATU; and proceed to the implementation of youth wage subsidy irrespective of COSATU concerns.
This if it were to happen, tactically, ANC would have had a strange bedfellow, the DA as an ally on this issue whilst its genuine ally is barking on the fringes. And so, this would have constituted a political powder keg within the alliance just because the DA would have used its political pantomime of divide and rule in the tripartite alliance. This unfurling strategy failed because this alliance is not built on shifting sands. This alliance does not wobble on the basis of momentary policy gainsays amongst itselves.
De Klerk has attack the South African Communist Party. In his reported words he says: SACP is one of the driving force behind the ANC radical policies. NDR is a dangerous philosophy. SACP does not see NDR as final. It sees it, as a new phase with SACP as a self-proclaimed vanguard of the working class will take over leadership of the revolution which will culminate in a communist state.
He further says: NDR is racially divisive and dangerous because it will lead to policies failed in USSR. This blasphemous diatribe by the former head of state is by no means dissimilar to DA's approach of apportioning attack to COSATU portraying it as a political and policy irritation to the ANC. De Klerk's diatribe to the Party as influential and a driving force to the ANC is meant ( like they tried with COSATU) to bludgeon the ANC against the SACP so that those within the ANC who may not subscribe to the long term objective for Socialism in this country will jitter, and develop a proclivity to lobby for pigeonholing the SACP on key policy discussion lest they are seen as engulfed by this Rooi Gevaar whose journey within the national democratic revolution goes beyond itself but a route to socialism. This is a tired attempt from De Klerk.
We have never hidden our strategic objectives for socialism. Its not a lurk to ambush the ANC with this objective. We are for power and we want to assert ourselves as a strong vanguard of the working class towards socialism openly without any conspiracy.
De Klerk and his dramatis personae appears very archaic and so insulated to the latest development in the World, especially in Latin America and how the Left rejuvenation to Socialism has gained currency such that Communist parties and coalitions of the anti-imperialist parties are winning elections. People are turning to socialism as capitalism and neo-liberal policies had brought in misery and grinding poverty.
He is speaking of policies of socialism having failed in the former Soviet Union but, true to his idiosyncrasies, he use the sleight of hand to omit the current global capitalist crisis we found ourselves currently enmeshed, the Europe is sinking especially the so-called PIGS countries because of capitalism as a system within which human crisis is an innate DNA. Countries such as Greek are being degraded to developing countries in Europe.
All of us are mobilized to contribute to the financial firewall built by IMF to salvage capitalist Euro zone whose genesis started in the US in 2008 after the collapse of Lehman brothers. I suggest he look at the latest ECB report and how the capitalist crisis has escalated paralleled with imperialist martial removals of democratically elected Head of states in favour of financial autocrats against the will of the people. I never heard De Klerk's foundation condemning these undemocratic means by Europe. Where is consistency?
The collapse of socialism in USSR was a consequence of human errors than Socialism itself as a system (I recommend him to read Joe Slovo World publicized Pamphlet, Has Socialism failed?). His vaunted Capitalism is a behemoth that elevates ad hominem and in society like ours, it undermines the imperatives of social cohesion as it perpetuates few opulence in the sea of abundant poverty.
We, as the SACP, are just coming from our successful 13th Congress and we have taken radical policies on national democratic revolution. We want to claim and take charge of it because we are not timid in our quest and pursuit for our long term objective of building socialism in this country. We are not ashamed of being communists and we will seek in a balanced way, to influence the ANC on our policies and itself, as it does, influence us in a dialectical way. The numerical growth of the Party exhibits confidence and the decrepitude of a capitalist system. They decries for an alternative.
It may very well be that De Klerk decries of the SACP influence just because of his deep-seated ideological opposition. We have no qualms with that but he must not seek to meddle with the ruling alliance and how interchangeably influences each other. So his lampoons on us, his rag tag talk and cobweb approach is so oblong, inanimate and a swan-song of humpty-dumpty. As Chinese philosopher Confucius said "Don't complain about the snow on your neighbour's roof when your doorstep is unclean". We don't want to be provoked by him as Communists.
Khaye Nkwanyana is the SACP Provincial Executive Committee and its Working Committee in KwaZulu Natal
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