SACP turns its back on the ANC

The South African Communist Party (SACP) will no longer support an ANC-led alliance and is calling for an intensified campaign by its partner Cosatu to install a new structure that will see a new political centre emerging.

The party’s decision comes in the wake of leaked emails that paint a grim picture of an ANC that is incapable of reining in its president and ministers, who have allegedly ceded state power to the Gupta family.

SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande says the blame for the alleged state capture by the Guptas should be placed squarely at the doorstep of President Jacob Zuma and his son Duduzane.

“Sadly, and even more concerning, the central role of President Zuma and his son Duduzane in this auctioning off of our national sovereignty is also increasingly apparent,” said Nzimande yesterday at a media conference after the party’s central executive committee meeting.

He said revelations of the reach that the Guptas had into government departments and state-owned companies was distressing and the “sheer scale of corporate capture and of parasitic plundering of public resources by the Gupta network becomes more and more evident”.

The SACP says failure to urgently realign the alliance will lead to certain defeat at the 2019 polls and the beginning of a downward spiral and the ultimate destruction of the ANC.

Nzimande said the next few months would see the emergence of a reconfigured alliance.

“It is no secret that the ANC is now in deep crisis. At the highest national leadership level it is paralysed by deep divisions.

“It is incapable of undertaking the decisive corrective measures that the great majority of ordinary ANC members and supporters now clearly recognise as imperative, beginning with the stepping down of President Zuma,” he said.

Nzimande’s comments come in the wake of a cancelled alliance political council meeting, which was abandoned by the ANC at the last minute.

Nzimande, along with his deputies, Jeremy Cronin and Solly Mapaila, said the leaked Gupta e-mails revealing the extent to which the family controls key sectors of the state, appeared to be authentic and that law enforcement agencies should place implicated officials behind bars.

Cronin said the criminal prosecution of individuals should run parallel to a judicial commission of inquiry that the SACP said should be immediately set up.

Cronin suggested that former communications minister Faith Muthambi had potentially committed a criminal offence by sharing Cabinet meeting secrets with the Guptas.

“There are criminal cases that should be actively pursued.

“The Hawks and the NPA [National Prosecuting Authority] should wake up and get over their factional tendencies,” Cronin said.