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Business Day Weekender, 17 June 2006
=Communist numbers soar as ANC leaders row=


 * KARIMA BROWN**


 * WHAT IS BEHIND THE SACP GROWTH SPURT?**

Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign
 * Basic services for all
 * Housing for the homeless
 * Free electricity for all
 * Free water and sanitation for all
 * Affordable health services for all
 * Social security for the elderly and poor children

SACP branches are supposed to have between 25 and 100 members. SACP membership is reported as 40,000
 * **SACP Provinces, Districts and branches, at June 13th, 2006** ||
 * **Province** || **Districts** || **Branches** ||
 * Gauteng || 6 || 81 ||
 * Mpumalanga || 4 || 183 ||
 * Limpopo || 5 || 57 ||
 * North West || 4 || 68 ||
 * Northern Cape || 5 || 36 ||
 * Western Cape || 9 || 57 ||
 * Eastern Cape || 6 || 186 ||
 * Free State || 5 || 41 ||
 * KwaZulu-Natal || 9 || 118 ||
 * **Total** || **53** || **827** ||

//**While the ruling party gets itself further embroiled in the succession debate, the SACP is mobilising support in poor communities that demand a better deal from government, writes** **KARIMA BROWN**//

THE South African Communist Party (SACP) has been making significant progress in establishing itself as a community-based, mass-appeal organisation, while its ally, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), has been looking the other way.

Unlike the ANC, which has largely reduced its campaigning to election time, the SACP has gone on the offensive in poor communities across SA to drum up support and increase its influence among SA’s marginalised voters.

Current data show SACP membership figures at 40000 — a fourfold increase in just eight years. More than 10000 people have joined in the past year alone, the party claims.

While it’s still the baby of the alliance, the growth spurt is positioning the SACP as an important power broker ahead of the ANC’s 2007 national conference, where a new ANC president will be elected. The SACP has gone so far as to set up a commission to look into the feasibility of contesting future elections independently of its long-time ally the ANC.

The ruling party, whose leaders are preoccupied with the raging succession debate, has admitted that its branches are in disarray.

Secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe said at the ANC’s last national general council that many branches were “conflict ridden” as members battled over leadership positions. “In many of our branches there are no sustainable political programmes and campaigns,” he said last year.

This leaves the ANC heavily reliant on its alliance partners — the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SACP — during election time. The SACP is now using the gap to boost its numbers through a series of grassroots campaigns, championing its youth league and exploiting its relationship with Cosatu.

The campaigns, targeting the financial sector and land reform, have seen the party growing strongly in provinces such as Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. In terms of Cosatu, all new trade union leaders, such as those recently elected to the National Union of Mineworkers leadership, are explicitly schooled in politics by the SACP. They then become joint members of both the SACP and Cosatu.

Stephen Friedman, visiting politics professor at Rhodes University, says the SACP’s current growth spurt in membership is important. “Forty thousand members is significant given their history as a vanguard and not a mass party. It confirms the idea that there is a constituency for SACP ideas,” he says. However, Friedman says the proof of SACP support would have to be borne out by voting patterns.

Adam Habib, director for the Human Sciences Research Council, says a sizeable SACP membership base could create a ripple effect in the political system as a whole. “After all, membership represents people who identify completely with the party, so electoral support is likely to be wider. Some studies have suggested that were the SACP and Cosatu to form an axis on their own, they could in effect become the official opposition,” Habib says.

Judith February of the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa) says the SACP’s growing public profile should be seen in the context of shifting relations within the tripartite alliance.

“The SACP is growing because it is raising important issues around economic and political policy and transparency. It also presents an alternative discourse. The growth of the Young Communist League is central to this development and is interesting because it points to a different path.” She says the SACP is “flexing its muscle” in the run-up to the ANC’s conference in 2007.

The SACP’s membership offensive comes amid a damaging succession battle in the ANC-led alliance as factions and individuals jostle for position and influence ahead of its conference next year. Despite his own involvement in the ANC’s leadership race, SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande insists that the succession debate is not about individuals.

“While individuals have an important role to play for the SACP, it’s about a class project. We are worried about the cosy relationship between individual state officials and business,” he says.

Explaining the SACP’s newfound growth as a mass-based organisation, Nzimande says the organisation as an independent political force is intent on building alternative centres of working-class power. He says the SACP’s recent special congress identified four key areas for contesting power: the state, the workplace, communities and the ideological front.

SACP central committee member Phillip Dexter says the party has developed a good public profile in poor communities and provided an “alternative” to those who were seeking “answers” to SA’s many problems.

“After the SACP’s unbanning we had about 3000 members. Our figures shot up after that to about 80000 but then fell and were at their lowest during our 10th congress in 1998, when membership fell to below 10000.” The Young Communist League alone now has 15000 members.

The SACP’s focus on grassroots campaigns has helped build membership numbers, but has also at times pitted grassroots party activists against local ANC strongmen and government.

One example is the SACP’s continued role in the continuing dispute between Khutsong residents and government over the town’s incorporation into North West. Before the local government polls and at the height of tension in that area, the SACP departed from its traditional role of backing the ANC and sided with the community against incorporation.

Nzimande says the Khutsong example highlights an increasingly “demobilised” ANC. “The ANC did not address the issues. We had to provide leadership there because it was clear that there was a vacuum in the community.”

The growing independence of the ANC’s allies signals a possible shift in power relations in the tripartite alliance. But does it mean wholesale changes in terms of strategic vision between the alliance partners?

“While we understand the need for the ANC to be a home for all, we also want an ANC that is biased towards the poor,” says Nzimande.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/weekender.aspx?ID=BD4A217206**

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