Statement on distortions and fabrications by the Mail & Guardian
The headline of the Mail and Guardian newspaper (26 June 2016) to the effect that the SACP regrets the cult it created around Zuma, is not only a reflection of gutter journalism, but it is devious and a distortion of what is being said in our Special National Congress discussion document (see here).
Nor is there any truth to the claim that there is a fallout between the ANC President, Cde Jacob Zuma, and our General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande. The SACP has also not lost trust either in President Zuma or Cosatu, as claimed in the article. All this is deliberately aimed at creating a poisoned atmosphere in the run up to the Alliance Summit and our Special National Congress.
For the record, this is what we say in our discussion document:
"A turning point was reached at the ANC’s 2007 National Conference, and the subsequent recall of President Mbeki as state president. These relatively dramatic events within the Alliance’s recent history opened up a new terrain and new prospects – but they also carried their own luggage:
- The Polokwane conference outcome was achieved with a “marriage of convenience” between a left bloc and a right-wing populist group which the SACP soon thereafter characterised as a tenderpreneuring “new tendency”. Part of this “new tendency” later morphed into the EFF.
- The struggle against the 1996 class project often became over-personalised (as if the displacement of Cde Thabo Mbeki in itself would end the project), and the solution to the problem also at times became excessively individualised around the person of Cde Jacob Zuma.
105. This “luggage” from Polokwane (inevitable as it might have been) has since had some negative impacts within COSATU and in the relationship between COSATU and the SACP.
106. Among the dangers in excessively personalising politics and developing personality cults is that undue expectations can easily be invested in individuals. Worse still, when these expectations are disappointed, hero worship can turn into an infantile anti-fixation. Much of Julius Malema’s current politics, with its myopic fixation on President Zuma is a case in point.
However, with a different character and content, we believe some of the same syndrome can be found in the recent political posture of Cde Vavi – for instance, his entirely inappropriate (for a serving COSATU general secretary) reaction to the electoral outcome of the ANC Mangaung National Conference.”
Nowhere in the above extract do we say that we "regret" "OUR ZUMA MISTAKE" as the Mail & Guardian headlines scream. Neither have we "hero-worshipped" any individual leader in the Alliance above another nor have we ever hero-worshipped any individual leader. It is a deliberate distortion on Mail & Guardian’s part.
All this extract seeks to do is to warn generally about the dangers of personalising our politics, a matter that we are all generally agreed upon in our Alliance. Our support and confidence in the collective leadership of our Alliance, including the President, has always been a principled one.
The intention of the Mail & Guardian and this fabrication is the pursuance of the paper's long-standing political agenda, that of seeking to drive a wedge within our Alliance.
For the record, as the SACP we do not regret any positions or struggles we have taken up, both inside or outside the Alliance, over the past decade. Whether it be on the transformation of the financial sector, against abuse of state organs to pursue factionalist battles inside the movement, our fight against HIV-AIDS denialism, or fighting against attempts to liquidate the SACP and/or the Alliance.
Statement issued by the SACP, June 26 2015
