SACP's response to Irvin Jim's Numsa leadership clique
The SACP categorically denies any involvement in the ‘NUMSA exposed document' - which appears to combine fact and fiction in advancing a conspiracy theory. It is true however that the SACP has called on current NUMSA members not to be pulled into an opportunistic agenda led by Irvin Jim and his clique.
It is Jim and his clique who need to clarify whether their agenda is regime change or not. In "official" NUMSA documents over the recent period the present ANC-led democratically elected government has sometimes been described as a state of "bourgeois dictatorship". The South African Police are sometimes characterised as nothing more than an instrument of bourgeois rule, who "will do anything to defend the property rights and profits of this class, including slaughtering the working class".
The Jim clique has criticised the SACP from departing from its 1989 programme, "The Path to Power". But that was a time when the illegal SACP unapologetically struggled for "regime change" and we didn't act with surprise when we were persecuted, jailed and killed by the apartheid regime. Of course the current state is contested by a variety of class interests.
Indeed, the SAPS has been guilty of inexcusable actions on occasions. But none of this justifies the flirtation with dangerous and provocative characterisations sometimes emanating from the Jim clique. If you don't want to be accused of a regime change agenda we suggest to this clique that they should watch their demagogic tongues.
Irvin Jim's petty hatred and accusatory attitude towards the SACP was also displayed when he attended (for a day) our 13th Congress at Ngoye, near Richards Bay in July 2012. At that Congress Jim claimed that he was being followed by an unknown vehicle one evening.
When he was told that the car he claimed was unknown and following him was that of the provincial chairperson of the SACP, and the Mayor of EThekwini, Comrade Nxumalo - who stayed at same hotel as Jim - he refused to believe us, thus implying the SACP was plotting to harm him. As we told Jim then, we wish to repeat this again this time around, that the SACP is not into the business of manufacturing post-1994 heroes and fake martyrs!
The SACP will further examine the latest allegations by the Irvin Jim's Numsa leadership clique and decide on the next cause of action to adopt at an appropriate time. Some gimmicks must just come to an end!
Statement issued by the SACP, December 3 2014
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