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SA Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande has fired warning shots at his detractors, saying those who no longer want him around need not do it under the guise of a special congress.
“There has been lots of speculation as to why we are having this conference. Some have been saying ‘Nzimande must choose whether he must be in Cabinet or in the central committee’,” the minister told today’s sitting of the SACP special national congress.
“That does not require a special national congress. If you are fed up with [me] or you think [
Nzimande was referring to a view by some in the party that he should be based at headquarters full-time, as opposed to serving in Cabinet. He is currently the minister for higher education and training.
“Let us not introduce things that have never been done in the SACP. If [we] don’t act in a manner that unites, we are not capable of being a vanguard. Let us behave ourselves in a manner that unites the party. The unity of the SACP is above all else.
“None of you sitting here have a permanent entitlement to be delegates or to be in the positions that you are in. You serve at the pleasure of the SACP,” Nzimande said.
Tuesday’s congress was a resolution of the 14th national congress held in 2017 ahead of the ANC’s watershed conference at Nasrec.
It was at that former congress that the party resolved to penning a road map towards contesting state power, which was to be considered during the special congress.
Read: ‘SACP can never replace the ANC’ – Blade Nzimande
The convening of the special congress would also have been to assess the outcomes of the ANC congress, where it was likely that the party would walk away from the tripartite alliance if Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma had emerged victorious over Cyril Ramaphosa [as ANC president].
SACP leaders were notably excluded from the ANC national executive committee which emerged at Nasrec.
Nzimande also took a veiled swipe at the party’s Western Cape structure for making its desire for the special congress to be made elective known to the media.
“We can’t take a decision as the central committee that this conference is not going to be an elective conference and a provincial structure goes out to the media to say this must be an elective conference; that is ill-discipline. You can’t have a province that pronounces itself as if it were a central committee,” Nzimande said.
“We don’t elect. We were not electing in the past three or four congresses ... In many of our provincial congresses and district congresses, we agreed beforehand and engaged each other. But some comrades think that the central committee acting that way is a sign of weakness and therefore it allows people to do as they wish. It is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of maturity. Communists must be mature.
“We must not prevent anyone from raising [issues], but they must be raised inside the structures. The moment you start raising an issue you are unhappy about in the newspapers you must know that you are on a slippery slope.”
City Press had reported that the Western Cape would be pushing for leadership renewal to bring about leaders with an appetite to contest state power. The move, however, did not garner enough votes in other provinces.
Nzimande also said that the resolution to contest state power had been misunderstood or misinterpreted by some structures which were agitating for the party to go at it alone. He insisted that even if that were to happen, it would not be outside of the alliance structure.
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