The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) notes the dastardly public rantings and insults directed at the South African Communist Party (SACP) by the structures of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) particularly by its President Julius Malema.
The structures of the ANCYL have been unleashing missives to the SACP as part of reinforcing the resurgence of anti-SACP posturing within our revolutionary alliance as led by the African National Congress (ANC). This anti-SACP wagon by the ANCYL and other likeminded individuals within the movement is not ideologically coherent and is informed by historically discredited and defeated endeavors to banish the SACP cadres who are members of the ANC. Lessons must be drawn on how we dealt with African Chauvinism and Anti-Communist tendencies within our ranks as represented by Pan Africanist Congress, Black Consciousness Movement, the Gang of 8 and COPE.
These attacks should be located and understood within the context of the re-alignment of different class forces and fractions within the ANC who see the SACP as a threat to their narrow and self-centered accumulation interests. The ANC YL particularly with particular reference to its President Malema must be cautious not be knowingly or unknowingly co-opted and used by this fraction.
As Numsa we fully support the calls for the transfer of wealth to the people as a whole in the form of nationalization and socialization of mines and banks as resolved in the Freedom Charter. We are supporting these calls NOT out of being fanatics as our detractors or class enemies suggests. But it is out of concrete struggles waged by our communities against the brutal theft of our resources in areas such as Maandaagshoek and Baphaalane-Ba-Mantserre.
We call on the ANCYL leadership to draw a leaf from these profound words by Mao Tse-Tung, "In the great leap forward movement, some will fall by the wayside, some will become revisionists. But some will join the enemy camp". We hope these words will accord the ANCYL national leadership an opportunity to revisit their ideological orientation and political understanding or ‘join the enemy camp'.
The leadership of Numsa will recommend to Cosatu to seek an audience with the ANCYL national leadership as part of rescuing this progressive formation of young people from being co-opted because of the new economic interests entrenched amongst our leaders. The ANCYL still remains a critical leadership reservoir and agitator for radical implementation of the Freedom Charter within the national liberation movement as led by the ANC.
Numsa is eagerly waiting for the outcomes of the vanguard party of the working class - the 2nd Special National Congress resolutions and we are confident that it has emerged with ideologically informed and clear resolutions that will lead society in general, but the working class in particular as we search ever forward to build working class power in the workplace, in the community, in the state, in the economy, internationally and ideologically.
Statement issued by Numsa Head Office, December 14 2009
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