Communists+left+in+the+cold,+Business+Day




 * Business Day, Johannesburg, 16 January 2006**

=**Communists ‘left out in cold’ from ANC poll lists**=


 * Jonathan Katzenellenbogen, International Affairs Editor**

THE Young Communist League (YCL) has called for an immediate investigation into the drawing up of the African National Congress (ANC) municipal elections list, due to be released today.

The league has also complained that its mother body, the South African Communist Party (SACP), was ignored while the lists were being drawn up.

President Thabo Mbeki launched the ANC’s election manifesto at the party’s 94th anniversary celebrations last week.

The ruling party’s insistence on strict criteria, including that all its lists include gender parity, has been the source of much division within its ranks.

The continued factional battles involving Mbeki and his party deputy president, Jacob Zuma, has also affected the ANC-led alliance’s elections list process.

YCL national secretary Buti Manamela said there had been particular problems in the drawing up of lists in Khayaleitsha in Western Cape, Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Limpopo.

In a statement released by the YCL national committee after a weekend meeting in Johannesburg, the league said it was “concerned that in many cases the ANC list process was not thoroughly representative of all alliance partners”.

Manamela also charged that the process was unrepresentative, forcing many ANC members to contest the upcoming poll as independent candidates.

In a sign of continuing tensions within the ruling tripartite alliance of the ANC, the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the YCL national committee also said it would use the upcoming election campaign to mobilise support for the SACP to contest elections on its own in future.

While the YCL says it has called on its members to vote for the ANC in the local government elections, it will still consider whether the SACP should run its own candidates in 2009.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/national.aspx?ID=BD4A139076**