SACP Statement on the Public Protector and attacks against the Party Numsa leadership clique
The Public Protector
The SACP has noted the Public Protector's press conference held yesterday, 4 December. Whilst the SACP welcomes the condemnation of the leaking of provisional reports by the Public Protector, who said the leaks were unethical and unlawful, the Party is however disappointed at Adv. Thuli Madonsela's stance not to institute investigation into the violation of the Public Protector Act and the undermining of the integrity of the Office of the Public Protector by frequent leaking of reports. This posture compromises the commitment of the Office of the Public Protector to the rule of law, in addition to the fact that the office cannot exonerated from the leaks, which have been frequent for a long while now.
The SACP reiterates its call for the leaking of provisional reports to be investigated. The Party also notes and welcomes the ANC and government positions that all the reports of investigations on Nkandla security upgrades must be released without any further delay.
The Irvin Jim leadership clique -childish leftism in words, self-interested opportunism in practice
The December 1st statement from the SACP's Augmented Central Committee noted that it is only after many months of trying to engage with the NUMSA leadership clique in a constructive way, that the Party has collectively decided to finally unmask the personal agenda behind the posture and positions adopted by Irvin Jim and his clique. We do so in the interest of rank-and-file NUMSA members, the unity of COSATU, and the working class in general. The resignation letter from NUMSA president, cde Cedric Gina has helped to confirm what we have long suspected. Here are some of the facts:
Thwarted ambitions
Jim constantly rails against the SACP leadership's participation in government and the ANC. But in the run-up to the ANC's 2012 Mangaung National Conference, it was Jim who tried to lobby President Zuma for cde Zwelinzima Vavi to be installed as ANC deputy president. Jim has not denied this engagement, and his claim that the Vavi proposal was not his at this meeting has been half-hearted and unconvincing. Jim's hypocrisy and original game-plan are now plain for all to see. He hoped for cde Vavi to be positioned to become State Deputy President in 2014, while Jim would take over the general secretary's position in COSATU. The failure of this un-mandated, behind-the-scenes manoeuvre and Jim's thwarted personal ambitions are what lie behind his current behaviour and posture.
Who is dividing COSATU?
Having failed to install himself as COSATU general secretary, Jim is now determined to split the federation and lead a break-away. While he accuses the SACP, the ANC and everyone else of dividing COSATU, it is the Jim NUMSA leadership clique that, since the beginning of this year, has openly been proclaiming a "rupture" in COSATU. In particular, Jim has sought to manipulate the disciplinary processes involving cde Zwelinzima Vavi, riding on the coat-tails of a working class leader who, whatever his faults, and whatever the outcomes of the various internal COSATU processes under-way, has earned a legitimate popularity within COSATU and beyond. Instead of working to ensure that COSATU's internal disciplinary and mediation processes are fair and above reproach, and that they build unity within the Federation, Jim and his clique have gone out of their way to factionalise COSATU on a simple, for-or-against Vavi platform.
An opportunism that stoops to the lowest level
In seeking to portray himself as the leading champion defender of cde Vavi, Jim's opportunism knows no bounds and can only be an embarrassment to cde Vavi himself. For instance, when the unfortunate episode of cde Vavi's involvement at work with a subordinate whom he had personally appointed became public, Jim's leadership clique treated us to a garbled and decontexualised reference to the Communist Manifesto. They summarised it as follows: "for us the working class, in a capitalist society, all law, morality, religion are so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which hides in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. And precisely because we the working class have no property...in a capitalist society, our relationship to our wives and children have no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations!" (This quotation is taken from the NUMSA 11th August Position Paper entitled "Analysis of the Crisis in COSATU".)
This disgraceful piece of opportunism seeks to displace the issue in question. What is at stake in the matter of the unfortunate relationship between cde Vavi and the COSATU employee is not whether they infringed bourgeois family morals, but a solid working class and labour relations issue - was a female subordinate the victim of patriarchal abuse by a manager, and was the relationship used to misappropriate COSATU resources? Since this matter is the subject of an internal COSATU disciplinary process, we have no interest in pronouncing on it as the SACP.
However, we do note that once the matter became public, cde Vavi had the decency to apologise, if not to his former subordinate, at least to his wife and family and indeed to COSATU and the working class.
Jim's NUMSA versus COSATU on the NDP
Jim is a sectarian bully who seeks to drive wedges wherever possible. Anyone who does not agree with his factional positions 100 percent is presented as the "enemy". For instance, Jim constantly seeks to portray the positions of the SACP on the National Development Plan as a "sell-out", and he contrasts them with the "NUMSA/COSATU" position on the NDP. In point of fact, the SACP and COSATU (the real COSATU, not Jim's portrayal of it) have adopted almost identical positions on the NDP. This is not accidental. There was close engagement and mutual influencing between our two formations on the NDP. The joint SACP-COSATU stance on the NDP had an important impact on the end August/early September Alliance Summit resolutions. It is not the SACP that is out of step with COSATU on the NDP, but Jim's NUMSA leadership clique that has adopted an infantile leftist position that is out of step with COSATU's official position. Likewise, it was not COSATU that boycotted the Alliance Summit. All major COSATU affiliates were present and active in the summit - with the exception of NUMSA, under the sectarian boycott influence of Jim and his clique.
Who is transgressing the founding principles of COSATU?
While blaming everyone else for wanting to divide COSATU, it is Jim's clique that is openly transgressing the founding principle of the federation - namely the principle of one-industry one-union. It is Jim's clique that is defying this foundational principle by poaching membership from other COSATU affiliates. They are no longer even trying to conceal this fact. Lately they have been advancing a post-hoc "theoretical" justification for it, claiming that the nature of capitalism has changed. Of course, capitalist production is constantly in flux and there may or may not be reasons to re-visit the COSATU constitution. But it is only factionalists and opportunists who wilfully defy the constitutional principles of their federation without first processing their perspectives through COSATU congress resolutions.
An opportunism that is prepared to sacrifice workers' interests in the pursuit of personal ambition
With his frustrated ambitions thwarted with the royal road to leading COSATU not opening up to him, Jim has become ever more reckless. He is prepared to risk workers' jobs in his headlong quest for personal publicity.
The SACP unambiguously supported the demands of metal-workers in the recent auto and components sector strikes. However, it is an open secret that while the demands of the workers were absolutely legitimate, the strike was gravely mishandled by the Jim clique. Instead of a militant, short, sharp and massive demonstration of worker strength across the sectors, the leadership brought out the auto sector first, and then, later, when the auto strike was concluded, the components sector was brought out. But while auto workers had returned to work, the components strike of course impacted on the auto assembly production lines, resulting in further shut-downs, short-time, and further loss of wages for auto workers. In practice, the strike dragged on for 8 weeks, with potential long-term implications for jobs and unionisation in the sector.
The bombastic pseudo-Marxist Jim likes to proclaim that there is an irreconcilable class war between capitalists and workers. We do not disagree. But in the midst of the auto sector strike what did this proletarian warrior have to say? He whined that the Retail Motor Industry bosses were no longer treating the union and him as chummy friends."Speaking at a briefing on Friday, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said employers were no longer treating the union as an ‘insider' but rather an adversary. This called into question the hard-fought right of collective bargaining, he said." ("Numsa threat to motor sector collective bargaining", Business Day, 30 September 2013). It is not collective bargaining that is called into question, but Jim's own self-proclaimed credentials as a class-struggle warrior. Having clumsily led the strike for his own personal political ambitions, Jim also came running to the much maligned SACP leadership in government asking for assistance to end the strike.
It is time for NUMSA rank-and-file workers to take back their union from the leadership clique around Jim, from all his tenderpreneurs and parasites who are leeching off worker funds, from those unelected intellectuals from outside of COSATU and from outside of our movement, who are paid to write speeches and policy documents supposedly in NUMSA's name. It is time for COSATU and its affiliates to deal decisively with these factionalists. The only beneficiaries of these antics are the bosses and their ideologues from Leon Louw and Allistair Sparks who are all enjoying the spectacle of this pseudo-leftist group seeking to tear apart the precious unity of NUMSA, COSATU and our Alliance. We must not allow them to succeed.
The SACP remains unshaken: there must be accountability
The SACP reiterates its consistent warning that much of the turmoil within Cosatu has little to do with differences on policy or on working class issues, but more to do with business unionism and the class capture and privatisation of a variety worker funds. The SACP reaffirms the correctness of the resolution by its Augmented Central Committee to include socialisation of worker funds in its financial sector campaign, working closely with Cosatu.
The Party has noted that Irvin Jim and his leadership clique convened a press conference in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday, 3rd December 2013. The SACP does not have socialism. It is, on the contrary, fighting for socialism! The insinuation by Jim and company that suggests the SACP is refusing with socialism reflects the ideological bankruptcy of Jim and company.
A thorough analysis of the statement by Jim and company clearly shows and reinforces the correctness of our call for workers to ask hard questions from this clique about trade union financial resources, including the Numsa investment company. This press conference by the clique was aimed at nothing else but to divert attention away from the crux of the questions raised by the SACP in its CC statement, released 1st December 2013. Consistent with their mode of operation, in the same way as they substitute despotic manipulation for worker mandates, this clique, known for howling with empty rhetoric, did not address any of the questions raised by our CC.
The CC noted that for a long while now the SACP has endured an endless string of personalised insults and lies from these clique, among others, coupled with an agenda of unbridled personal ambitions. As we have said following our CC, it is now glaringly obvious that the factional agenda pursued by this clique has nothing to do with building working class unity but is embedded in driving a wedge within the working class and our broader movement with an intention to form another political organisation. This Numsa clique will also stop at nothing in its objective of dividing the progressive trade union movement, including collaboration with bourgeois media and other detractors of our movement.
The CC has called on Numsa's rank-and-file members to ask the leadership clique that is dominating the union to come clean and to account. The SACP reiterates this revolutionary call in no uncertain terms, and will not be threatened by any means. The evasive waffling by Jim and company encourages the SACP to strengthen this revolutionary call.
Challenged to undergo independent life-style audits, Jim and company have rejected this call, hiding behind the rest of our movement. We reiterate that while SACP members serving in parliament and the executive are constantly maligned by the Numsa leadership clique, they are all accountable to parliament and to the public, and are required, which they do, to submit annual disclosures of interest, including, in the case of members of the executive, declaration by their spouses. There is no such transparency when it comes to the Numsa leadership clique.
The SACP has led by example on the call for an independent lifestyle audit. Long before the Numsa leadership clique and its associates outside the union who claim to have been the first to open up for and make the call, SACP General Secretary was the first within our movement to undergo independent lifestyle audit by 6 February 2008. The SACP remains committed to the perpetual continuation of this accountability.
The SACP has called on Jim to be asked, in the name of worker democracy, to explain what his role was when he chaired the Eastern Cape tender board, and whether he benefited personally in any way. In his office bearers' statement at their press conference on Tuesday, Jim provides no answer to this question.
The SACP has called on Jim and his deputy Karl Cloete, long standing business partners, to be asked to come clean on the work of the Numsa investment arm and its relationship to its holdings in Doves (the funerals, insurance and finance company), to explain the relationship between Numsa investment arm's Dovess Absa account, the Eriotrax FNB account and Brevity Trade 12. Again, Jim and company did not offer any explanation. They evaded the question.
The SACP has called on Jim to be asked to explain his individual role in December 2010 in allotting Preference Shares from Brevity Trade to Eriotrax, and the purpose of so doing. Jim chose to hide behind his howling at one's supposed movement, particularly the SACP and ANC, increasingly Cosatu too, and provided absolutely no explanation.
The SACP noted that in his resignation letter as Numsa President, Cedric Gina referred to a Numsa Absa account and his differences with Jim about it, the Party asked what exactly Gina was referring to. In the fashionably longish but empty statement, Jim yet again evaded providing an explanation.
The SACP has asked whether Jim and company can assure Numsa members that funds earned through Doves and other Numsa Investment arm activities are not being diverted into a web of personal accounts, businesses and war-chests funding factionalist activities in our movement, including in the student movement. We are entitled to ask if any of the decisions and activities to that effect have been sanctioned by the Numsa membership.
We reiterate that these are some of the questions that, the SACP believes, Numsa's rank-and-file membership must pose to Jim and company in the name of worker democracy and in the name of taking back control of their union and their own funds.
The SACP also remains steadfast in its call on the Minister of Labour to institute an audit on the flow of millions of Rands of agency fees in Numsa and to explain to the public where these funds have ended up, in part or in whole.
On Tuesday at their press conference, Jim and company made wild, baseless and unfounded allegations against the SACP and its leadership, as usual, targeting our General Secretary. The SACP rejects these allegations not only as an attempt to divert attention away from the pertinent questions it has raised, but with the contempt it deserves as malicious, slanderous and a fabrication of a worst, frustrated type.
In their statement, Jim and company suggest that Numsa deployed SACP members in government. On the contrary, this clique has absolutely no such capacity, which explains why they have had to consistently howl at the SACP and ANC, supposedly their own formations, from outside and from media platforms which are dominated by "white monopoly capital", ironically, the strategic enemy of the revolution as they say. It is this enemy that provides Jim and company with a platform to insult our movement and de-campaign it, which is the essence of their posture, more and more their strategy too.
The capitalist class that exploits Numsa members, the working class and poor in general, has never endured from Jim and company the endless attacks that are often directed at the SACP and ANC, and even Cosatu. In addition, and among many other factors, this is what characterises their agenda as counter-revolutionary.
Taking responsibility for the revolution
For the record, neither are SACP members who serve in councils, legislative bodies and executives at the three spheres of government, become ineffective. Instead communists proudly serve our government with distinction in many areas.
The SACP reaffirms advancing, deepening, defending and taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution, in all key sites of struggle and power, including in the state. This is a complex process of class struggle that is characterised, among others, by the need for unity of purpose and confronting the many contradictions inherent in any struggle.
The SACP calls on all workers to take responsibility for the revolution, be active in the revolutionary movement, and adhere to the principles of revolutionary discipline. We need unity, but discipline is fundamental. We particularly call upon Numsa members not to be misled and be driven to the sidelines of our Alliance and revolution.
Follow the SACP on Twitter: @2SACP
Statement issued by the SACP, December 5 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
