ANC YL RESPONSE TO THE SACP ON JEREMY CRONIN

The African National Congress Youth League solemnly requests the South African Communist Party to point at insults it claims are part of the response we issued against SACP Deputy General Secretary, Jeremy Cronin.

The ANC YL has openly engaged with the reactionary views of Jeremy Cronin and not convinced that our open engagement represent any form of insult. It can never be correct that whenever we engage the leaders of the Communist Party, we are subjected to labels and characterisations as anti-communists and dishonest people.

The statement of the SACP also does not clarify whether the reactionary views expressed by Jeremy Cronin represent the official positions of the Communist Party, because we strongly believe they do not.

If the SACP agrees with the views of Jeremy Cronin on Nationalisation, it must say so and we will then be able to expose the inconsistencies that characterise the entire input in relation to what the Communist Party and General Secretary Blade Nzimande have been saying.

It is also not true that the ANC Youth League did not respond to the invitation of the SACP to attend the Political School. The ANC YL attended the SACP Political School and made the only presentation in what was initially planned as a panel discussion with SACP DGS, Jeremy Cronin.

Jeremy Cronin could have used the opportunity to thoroughly understand the Youth League's call for nationalisation had he attended the SACP Political School and participated in the panel discussion, but he was not there.

The ANC YL holds the Communist Party in high regard, but will never be co-opted to reformist programmes of protecting and defending the status quo in terms of property relations, with a false hope that simply transforming the system will better the lives of our people.

Statement issued by the ANC Youth League, November 21 2009

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter