Best way to deal with communism was to let SACP be

If the erstwhile leaders of the National Party could have seen South Africa in 2022, then perhaps they would have gone a lot softer on their “Rooi gevaar” (Red danger) propaganda, which painted Communists as the biggest threat to civilisation as we know it.

It is now 32 years since the unbanning of the much-feared SA Communist Party (SACP) – and time has proved that the best way to deal with communism of our local variety was to just let it be.

The SACP is increasingly becoming a quirky sidelight in South African history having done nothing to realise the dream of a socialist state ruled by Karl Marx’s seminal foundation slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

We are more of a capitalist-dominated country than ever before, proving that SACP leader Joe Slovo was correct in wondering, in his landmark discussion paper in 1990, whether “socialism has failed”.

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Despite what many think, socialism never even got going in this country. That was because the SACP, as part of the tripartite alliance with the ANC and Cosatu, was just as seduced by the wealth of capitalism as the leaders of the main party.

SACP leaders, unionists and ANC cadres, have all lived the life of “champagne socialism” since 1994, enjoying luxury while the masses toiled and wallowed in poverty.

There have been attempts to impose socialism, but these have been so ineptly executed that they have done more damage than good, including wage and labour legislation and black economic empowerment.

At the same time, state capitalism – as embodied by the state-owned enterprises set up by the Nats – is proving an abject failure as looters fill their pockets.

Ironically, it is the SACP which should be consigned to what ultra-Leftist Leon Trotsky called “the dustbin of history”.