Public response to Communications Workers Union

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

The Communications Workers Union (CWU) statement attacking the SACP in general and our General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande in particular is based on a deliberate distortion of what he actually said on the occasion of the public launch of the Party's "Second Radical Phase of the National Democratic Revolution" discussion document. (This launch was held on Wednesday 29October and not on "Thursday 30 October" as claimed by the CWU). Our General Secretary condemned one COSATU affiliate for funding other affiliates to create voting fodder for purely factional purposes.

The behaviour condemned contrasts sharply with the solidarity funding that, for instance, the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) provided to the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) at the height of the farm-worker strikes in the Western Cape last year. The SACP warmly commended SACTWU for this excellent example in the great trade union traditions of recognising that "An injury to one is an injury to all". Factional funding of the kind condemned by our General Secretary has nothing to do with working class struggles on the ground, and everything to do with palace politics in which an injury to one is a factional advantage to another.

Further, the personalised attack on Comrade Blade Nzimande that "he has no proven trade record as a worker leader" (sic) reflects a narrow and sectarian understanding of what it means to be a leader of the Communist Party and the working class. The founders of the World Communist Movement Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Lenin were not "trade recorded". Contrary to the distortion by the CWU, neither were the revered leaders and General Secretaries of the SACP Chris Hani and Joe Slovo.  

There is a trend within the trade union movement which believes that the sole role of the working class movement is to defend workers at the workplace within the confines of the capitalist system. In sharp contrast, the Communist Party understands its role to be to work towards the replacement of the capitalist system by socialism. To do this, the Party as the main political representative of the working class must be in all centres of power - including our own government!

Had the CWU communicated its concerns to the Communist Party it would have avoided such obvious and embarrassing errors and distortions in its statement.   

Once more the SACP reiterates its call for unity in the ranks of the progressive trade union movement and among the workers as a whole.

Statement issued by the SACP, November 4 2014

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