SACP expects ‘frank discussions’ at meeting with ANC leaders

As a crucial meeting is set to get under way between the ANC and its alliance partner, the SA Communist Party today – the SACP reportedly expects “a meeting of equals” with the ruling party where nobody fears nobody in discussing the challenges facing the tripartite alliance.

“We are two equal organisations who are partners in the relationship, with the ANC mandated to head the movement because of its multiclass nature.

“The ANC is not a big brother to us. There is no fear from our side to raise any issue, irrespective of who is there,” SACP second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila told The City Press at the weekend.

 The paper reported that the bilateral talks between the SACP politburo and the ANC national working committee had been postponed on at least three occasions because either President Jacob Zuma or SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande had been unavailable.

Mapaila said the SACP had consistently encouraged the ANC “to deal decisively with corruption”, as this was damaging the image of the entire tripartite alliance comprising Cosatu, the SACP, and the ANC as the leader of the movement.

He said “the misdemeanours” had continued relentlessly within the ANC, referring particularly to the current debacle over uncertainty about the payment of social grants by the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) on April 1 to 17 million citizens dependent on government’s social assistance.

“No, the masses are the gods of the revolution. There is no way that we could go [to the meeting] and be nice to each other while the movement goes down,” he said.

The SACP has become the latest alliance partner of the ANC after Cosatu to call for Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini to step down for failing to coming up with an in-house plan to pay social grants.

Mapaila said the communists could not be seen to be in a relationship with a corrupt movement.

“We have to be clear that all of these wrong things must be responded to sufficiently, and we must come with a programme to resolve these things, or else we will take radical decisions at our congress to determine where our revolution must go,” he said.

The SACP will go to congress in July, where a decision by the party is expected to be taken on whether it should contest elections on its own in 2019.

SACP members were in favour of the party contesting on its own, according to Mapaila.

“We are a political party, and we should not be a subsidiary of another party. And sometimes some leaders of the ANC think we are subsidiaries.”

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