IT is said that Jeremy Cronin, the deputy public works minister and the first deputy general secretary of the SACP, is the clever communist. That, at least, is the how he is regarded by some of the Mahogany Ridge regulars. However, I find it a puzzling assertion and I wonder about the implied suggestion, that Cronin's immediate superior in the party, Blade Nzimande, is not the clever communist. 

Is this uncharitable? Jargon, after all, is not Nzimande's native tongue, and though what he says very often does smell dead and rotten, we must nevertheless applaud the higher education minister's brave attempts at rhetoric, about which more later.

It was for the better, then, in the interests of clarity and brevity, that it was Cronin, and not Nzimande, who addressed a Chris Hani memorial meeting at the University of Cape Town on Wednesday and used the occasion to make up our minds for us about Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel's recent comments about government blaming apartheid for its failings.

Cronin, typically, once again accused a shoddy "commercial" media of giving readers the impression that Manuel was exonerating apartheid and dismissing its legacy as irrelevant. Manuel, of course, had done nothing of the sort - and nowhere was this suggested in any newspaper report that I read. 

In fact, it would appear that the only people confused by Manuel's argument for a stronger, more effective government needed to address the needs of the disadvantaged were, um, members of the ruling party and their allies. It's baffling why this should be the case. But here, again, is the gist of Manuel's message, in his own words: 

"Nineteen years into democracy, our government has run out of excuses. We cannot continue to blame apartheid for our failings as a state. We cannot plead ignorance or inexperience. For almost two decades, the public has been patient in the face of mediocre services. The time for change, for a ruthless focus on implementation has come.

"The National Development Plan makes proposals in a range of areas from the intergovernmental system . . . to supply chain management, from capacity building to managing the political administrative interface. These are practical proposals that can be acted upon immediately. Many of them do not require legal changes or policy prescriptions. They simply require a commitment to common sense and to getting things right."

What is so difficult to understand? What do they fear? Is it the stress on ruthlessness with regards to focus on implementation? The bit about common sense and getting things right? And so it was that, with Manuel's comments perhaps uppermost in the thoughts of those who spoke there, the memorial service at Hani's graveside turned into something of an ideological ding-dong over the slain leader.

First up was Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi, who pointedly reminded Nzimande of his predecessor's commitment to the party: "At a time when many leaders were seeking jobs as government ministers or officials - with better salaries - Chris Hani took on the lowly paid, but politically crucial, position of general secretary of the SACP."

Nzimande was having none of this, and hit back at Vavi, saying those who had used Hani's statement to "rubbish" the party's decisions were "vulgarising" his stance, and he insisted that, if a political decision had been taken to deploy him, Hani would have accepted a government job.

Rather cleverly, Nzimande did add a qualifier: "We must persuade some of our comrades not to try and do the impossible, the dead and the departed cannot be deployed. Let us not try and deploy Comrade Chris in 2013 when he passed away in 1993." He had a few words for Manuel: "This government is not the enemy. It's our own government; it is not the government of dogs."

Then came President Jacob Zuma, who also indicated that he was in no hurry to bid apartheid farewell and he warned, alas and alack, that its legacy may yet be with us for, oh, some time still. 

"To suggest we cannot blame apartheid for what is happening in our country now, I think is a mistake to say the least," he said. "We don't need to indicate what it is apartheid did. The fact that the country is two in one . . . [on one side] there is a beautiful part, like the Nkandla compound, and squatters on the other side, this is not the making of democracy and we can't stop blaming those who caused it."

I have absolutely no idea how mention of Zuma's rural homestead fell into the paragraph above. Honestly. It must be more of that shoddy journalism that Cronin's always on about.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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