SACP+stakes+claim+as+alliance+equal,+Karima+Brown,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 18 January 2007
=SACP stakes claim as alliance equal=


 * Karima Brown, Political Editor**

THE South African Communist Party (SACP) staked its claim yesterday to be considered an equal partner in any future policy review ahead of the African National Congress’s (ANC) policy conference in June.

The ANC policy conference, likely to see fierce debate among tripartite alliance factions, will be a curtain raiser for the ruling party’s elective conference in December, when a new ANC president will be elected.

The left in the ANC and the alliance are on record about their push to keep the ANC “pro-poor”. President Thabo Mbeki and government’s economic cluster ministers have in the past received a tongue-lashing over their perceived attempts to modernise the ANC and make it more “friendly” to big capital and sections of business.

SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande called yesterday for the ANC to be reclaimed and for “the defence of the traditions of the movement”, signalling that the party was going to up the ante in its efforts to build the ANC as a “site of working class power”.

In the past, government policy on the economy, HIV/AIDS, the role of the Presidency and foreign policy took a hammering when the ANC’s leftist allies took umbrage with Mbeki over what they perceived to be their marginalisation from the policy formulation process.

Writing in the SACP online journal, Umsebenzi, Nzimande said: “Government has effectively become an autonomous terrain which in many instances has operated in a parallel, if not independent, (way) from the organisational structures of the ANC and the alliance, thus threatening to seriously erode organisational accountability and discipline.”

The SACP, due to hold its elective conference in July, said any policy transformation could come about as a result of “proper consultation” within the tripartite alliance.

Nzimande’s comments suggests debate on policy is fast shaping up to become a major fault line ahead of the ANC’s presidential succession race. The SACP called for “frank and open” debate on policy matters rather than focusing on “personalities” who were posturing as possible presidential candidates to take over the ANC.

Nzimande said the ANC and its allies needed to ask tough questions about the “demobilisation” of the ANC as a mass movement.

“Could it also not be that the significant demobilisation of the ANC that the secretary-general spoke about in 2005 is a deliberate attempt by pockets within our movement located within state structures to pursue their own agendas without the organisation holding them to account?”


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A361433**

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