It's really amusing to be called an ideologue by SA Communist Party deputy Secretary General Jeremy Cronin (Red Alert: The e-toll saga - ideological confusions and strange bedfellows). 

He writes in a typically dense jargon-laden style with words like "commodification". And there's the obligatory good word put in for wretched Cuba, impoverished by years of failed communist policies (see here).

Its citizens are treated as commodities as they are ordered about by unelected leaders and bureaucrats. Cronin's ideological blinkers lead him to praise the only country in the world where ageing white men rule a majority-black population.

I certainly don't wake up every morning thinking that I represent a class interest, but perhaps he does. If he's worried about strange bedfellows, how come he and I agree on the colossal misdirection of resources poured into the R30 billion Gautrain?

This money should have been used to upgrade Metro Rail and the highways. We wouldn't then have this toll stand-off. Poor governance and corruption are not ideological, and Cronin serves in a government massively infected by both.

This makes him an apologist even though he distances himself by his hand-wringing. Although his beloved Cuba tolerates no opposition, he should appreciate the role that opposition parties and civic organisations play here in holding government to account when it blunders, as it has on transport issues in Gauteng.

Statement issued by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Leader in the Gauteng Legislature, March 18 2012

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