When members or supporters of the Zuma faction physically attack members of the Democratic Alliance, and others shout "Kill Lekota!" and "Kill Shilowa!" outside a perfectly constitutional and law-governed political meeting, then the number one issue in South Africa is: Stormtroopers on the streets, and the political groupings that organise and promote them (see here and here).

When Judge Carole Lewis of the Supreme Court of Appeal states in a calmly argued address to the South African Institute of Race Relations that "The judiciary and its independence are under threat at present", South Africa must sit up and take notice (see here).

When, further,the provincial secretary of the South African Communist Party in KwaZulu-Natal asserts that there is an "offensive" against the SACP in the "unfolding dynamics within the liberation movement and the Tripartite Alliance, in particular by a vociferously anti-communist element", this draws attention to the fact that a central issue in South Africa today is indeed the character and role of the Communist Party, and in particular: its propensity towards a violent, anti-constitutional political programme. (See here).

The policy statements, language and behaviour of the Communist Party and its allies make it plain that this Party, with a diminutive independent base of electoral support in the country, has embarked on a determined drive for the seizure of state power under the clothing of the Zuma faction of the African National Congress. A Party that could win little more than 8% of the total vote in a general election - if it dared show its face to the electorate under its own name - has embarked on a drive, in the words of its secretary-general, Blade Nzimande, to "hegemonise state power" (see here).

This is the meaning of the Communist Party's policy statement of 10 September, "The Party and State Power". The ugly verb "hegemonise", given birth from the abstract noun "hegemony" in the political philosophy of the jailed Italian marxist thinker of the last century, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), means basically the fist of force disguised in nebulous clouds of popularly accepted ideas and language: a perfect indicator of the strategy of the SACP in its efforts to grasp for itself the "State Power".

These references should be carefully followed up and studied by readers for themselves, so that individuals may make up their own minds as to the primary political issue now facing South Africa. It is the Communist Party.

No other party in South Africa has the word "dictatorship" graven so starkly on its heart ("dictatorship of the proletariat"). The old National Party of the apartheid regime flirted with the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the Thirties and Forties, but the Communist Party brazenly and programmatically advocated the dictatorship of Lenin, Stalin and their successors in Russia for seven decades, and still does. It has schooled hundreds of "cadres" now "deployed" across political and state institutions in South Africa in this creed, many of them schooled for long terms actually in Russia and its former client states in Eastern Europe (the German Democratic Republic, Hitler's heir in despotism, in particular). Many of these Soviet graduates with their "comrades' degrees" (as they were derisively called in exile) did actually learn something from their tutors: the habit of dictatorship.

This anti-constitutional Party employs the Constitution as cover in the manner of the Wooden Horse in the siege of Troy, in the same way as it employs the ANC. Its language of democracy, of rights, of the welfare of the poor, of injustices of all kinds becomes the engine for the acquisition of dictatorial control by a small clique of power-hungry individuals, who then proceed to devour one another, in the process dispensing with democracy, rights and the welfare of the poor, with themselves the architects of injustices of all kinds. By now it is an old story, written across the globe in letters of fire from Rumania to Kampuchea to North Korea. The SACP intends this terrible history to be the future for South Africa. Its principal instrument is the Zuma wing of the ANC together with its own centralised authority in the trade unions. It operates both constitutionally and anti-constitutionally at the same time.

The prime historical example in the installation of a blood-drenched dictatorship through the civilised means of the parliamentary process was Hitler's Machtergreifung (pronounced Macht-er-grei-fung), Hitler's seizure ("ergreifung") of state power ("Macht"). It was not for nothing that the term "Nazi", the abbreviated reference in German for the National Socialist German Workers' Party, relates to a party the name of which contains two items high in the ideological lexicon of the SACP ("socialist" and "workers"), while "national" is the middle term in the name of the ANC.

Nationalist socialism or socialist nationalism is an old game played across the world both by fascistic and by Stalinist parties interchangeably. The language and terms are extraordinarily constant. Hermann Goering, Hitler's heavyweight party comrade, famously referred to his Stormtroopers, or Brownshirts, as being red beneath the brown. Communist radicalism and energetic hatreds lay just below the surface of their fascist terror. Benito Mussolini, the former socialist leader who was first Hitler's tutor and then his lackey in the installation of the fascist state, whinged and whined about the fate of Italy as a "proletarian nation" trampled and despoiled by the "plutocratic powers". It's an old game, this growling and ranting, with its rhetoric of grievance and appetite for killing: the mobilisation of victimhood into a club with which to beat out other people's brains.

Yet who can forget sweet, gentle Adolf, in his sober suit, in the black-and-white newsreel footage of January 1933, politely being shown his seat by those grave and comical burghers of the political class of the Weimar Republic, notably the wily Franz von Papen - not wily enough by a million years - as he is constitutionally and respectfully invited to assume office as the democratically elected Chancellor of the German Republic? Ah, there was a role model for Comrades Blade Nzimande and Gwede Mantashe in the silky art of how to "hegemonise state power"! Sweet language for the political class, all the constitutional niceties tastefully observed - and terror in the streets. Let loose the dogs of war!

The role and strategy of the Communist Party now needs to be analysed in terms of ethnic allegiances within the ANC. These are becoming more transparent by the day. Despite protestations by the Zuma alliance that several of its leaders are themselves isiXhosa-speakers  - among them Zwelinzima Vavi (general secretary of Cosatu), Fikile Mbalula (former president of the ANC Youth League) and Zizi Kodwa (spokesperson of the ANCYL) - reality has clearly demonstrated over the past month that there is massive support in the largely Xhosa-speaking provinces for the anti-Zuma faction in the ANC. Statistical analysis by Mapeete Mohale in the online newsletter of the Institute of Race Relations has revealed an equivalent preponderance of support for the Zuma grouping among Zulu-speakers. (See here).

It is no exaggeration to say that never in its 96-year history has the ANC been so divided on the grounds of ethnic/linguistic origin: the one issue which, above all others, the ANC was founded to overcome and transcend, as a source of division in the political life of black South Africans.

It was useless for Jacob Zuma in his recent address to the metalworkers' union, Numsa, to lay claim to the heritage of one of the founding fathers of the ANC, Pixley ka Izaka Seme (the uncle of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party, by the way). Zuma recalled for his audience that Seme was "correct in 1911 when he made a call that: 'The demon of racialism, the aberration of the Xhosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tsongas, between the Basothos and every other native must be buried and forgotten. ...We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today'." (See here).

The problem is that Zuma himself is not averse to the "demon of racialism" when it operates on his own behalf. Mosiuoa Lekota pointed out, not inaccurately, that neither Zuma nor his political commanders required his supporters to remove their "100% Zuluboy" T-shirts bearing his portrait at the ANC national conference at Polokwane last December, which resulted in the rout of the Mbeki grouping. The devil of chauvinism was in evidence then, and has been since. Zuma and his commanders are among the principal authors of the divisions, jealousies, woes, backwardness and ignorance that are now tearing ANC member from ANC member across the country, in flat contradiction of the spirit of Seme's teaching.

Yet who would deny that they were taught their autocratic behaviour by the Mbeki grouping (including Lekota), albeit administered in a more circumspect, more elegantly tailored fashion? Those glory days, when Thabo Mbeki was Master and Commander, seem now like a forgotten dream, but until 18 months ago Mbeki seemed as powerful as a Pharoah: head of the party, head of the state apparatus, with Essop Pahad his fixer-in-chief and Ronnie Kasrils in charge of the secret services, with the vanished Ronald Suresh Roberts his imbongi intellectual and Mark Gevisser the author of his (literally heavy weight) biography.

Mbeki held his position in the ANC and the state from several sources, but primary among them was his lineal descent at the head of half a century of political predominance of isiXhosa-speakers in the top leadership of the ANC. This Xhosa predominance was no secret in the ANC and Umkhonto weSizwe in exile, though it often had to be whispered in secret. Even in Quatro prison camp in northern Angola, members of Umkhonto who had been imprisoned for their democratic demands became silent when discussing this matter, if a fellow-prisoner who was a Xhosa-speaker approached.

The matter is easily verified. An unimpeachable source is the autobiography by two Zulu-speaking former members of Umkhonto weSizwe from the same generation as Zuma himself, Thula Bopela and Daluxolo Luthuli, in their history, Umkhonto weSizwe. Fighting for a Divided People (Galago, Alberton, 2005). The authors write of the strains that appeared in one of the first camps in exile for the troops of Umkhonto, at Kongwa in Tanzania, in the mid-1960s.

Their focus in this account is on the commander at Kongwa at that time, an isiXhosa-speaking trade unionist from the Western Cape, Archie Sibeko, who was known in Umkhonto by his "travelling name" or nom de guerre, Zola Zembe. As Bopela and Luthuli continue, they had assumed that "somebody from a trade union or communist party background would emphasise the class approach to the struggle and not a tribal one. Zola Zembe, unfortunately for everyone, was Xhosa first and ANC second. He caused division by frequently calling for meetings to be attended only by people from the Eastern Cape. What was discussed at such meetings remained a mystery to guys from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

"Zembe was not the only one. There were individuals from all provinces whose consciousness remained tribal, despite claiming to be nationalists and even Marxists. This caused problems for the ANC from the outset. ...

"Zembe had been swept into a nationalist working-class movement, but in his own heart of hearts he remained a Xhosa and an anomaly. The ANC called on us all to rise to the challenge of becoming nationalists, yet many people - perhaps unconsciously - brought their tribal baggage along with them".

As the authors relate, Zembe's pro-Xhosa chauvinism had its obvious result. Zulu-speaking troops at Kongwa, among them Philimon Biyela (known as "Pangaman"), responded to Zembe in kind. Pangaman announced a meeting that "would be attended only by people from Natal". According to the authors, this meeting did not in fact take place, and Zembe "stopped his practice of openly calling meetings of Eastern Cape people, although he still did it clandestinely. Tribal tensions in the camp grew, fuelled by such actions". (p.46)

By appealing to an anti-constitutionalist mobilisation in the country on the grounds of class (and to some degree, of race), the SACP as the main organiser of the Zuma faction has severely damaged the matrix of consensus on which the ANC was founded and on which it has maintained itself for nearly a century, as the principal forum of mediation between African ethnic/linguistic groupings in the country.

Despite its specific grievances with the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, it has promoted - whether consciously or not, but probably blindly - the Zimbabwefication of South African politics by means of an actual ethnic mobilisation under the aegis of its sub-marxist class and nationalist rhetoric and behaviour.

One is bound to recall that in terms of black politics in South Africa in the Eighties and early Nineties, no province was so militarised as KwaZulu-Natal, now the great reserve base of the Zuma faction. The SACP was the organiser and leader of the war party of the ANC in that province, in its bloody conflict with the Inkatha Freedom Party, which had itself been formed following consultation with the then Acting President of the ANC in exile, Oliver Tambo. Substantial further research is needed for a clearer picture to emerge of the underlying nature of the breach between the IFP and the ANC in 1979, with its subsequent bloody result. This is one of the many areas of recent South African political history which have not yet been adequately investigated - partly through negligence, partly through fear, partly because so many low-grade historians enrolled as imbongis of the ruling party.

Two points only need be made at this stage. First, a question. It would be interesting to know whether the detention by the ANC in its Gulag prison camp, Quatro, in northern Angola in 1979, of a member of a princely house of the amaZulu, known in exile as "Ernest Khumalo", played any role in sharpening an extreme suspicion among his relatives as to their own likely fate under an ANC regime in South Africa. (For a reference to the fate of Ernest Khumalo, incorrectly transcribed as "Mumalo", see the final paragraph under the sub-heading "The Beginnings of Quadro", see here). This bitter experience of Ernest Khumalo followed his efforts, together with two colleagues, Solly Ngungunyana and Drake, to leave the ANC. Nothing in this history, first published in July 1990, has ever been contested by the ANC.

The second point is also grim. In the killing fields of South Africa from the Sixties up to 1994, one of the principal marshals of death was the South African Communist Party leader, Harry Gwala, the warlord of ANC forces in KwaZulu-Natal in the war with Inkatha. Much more research is needed into the character of his conduct as a key political and military leader. Whether as a political prisoner on Robben Island or as commander of ANC paramilitary forces in the civil war among isiZulu speakers, all the evidence is that this was a man of Stalinist ferocity.

The question now is: is the spirit of Harry Gwala to rule South Africa, as the methodology of the campaign by the SACP to "hegemonise state power"?