 The communists are not only insulting
us, they are
holding us back, says ANC Youth League
Floyd Shivambu, Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, 20 December 2009 THE perceived or real attack on the incumbent leadership of the SA Communist Party (SACP) and Young Communist League (YCL) began with the SACP's (or should I say Jeremy Cronin's) response to the ANC Youth League's (ANCYL) emphasis that our struggle should begin to actualise and practicalise the emancipation of the black majority and Africans, in particular. The SACP's response was to label the call for "Africans in particular" as narrow Africanist chauvinism. It is Cronin who resurrected the concept of "narrow Africanist chauvinism" because at the Cosatu political school, which preceded an SACP central committee meeting by a week, he spoke in detail about "Africanist chauvinism" in response to the observation by the ANCYL president that Africans are not occupying strategic positions in the cabinet's economic cluster. The statement of the SACP central committee a week later reflected the same words and sentiment used by Cronin at the Cosatu school, but it was captured in the media as the words of SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande. Cronin also used the Cosatu platform to suggest that the ANCYL's perspective on mine nationalisation is sponsored by indebted BEE components, who are interested in being bailed out and nothing else. Cronin's was a sad intervention. In the ANCYL's first response on its website on August 27, youth league president Julius Malema appealed to the SACP leadership to engage with the ANCYL openly. He specifically said: "We believe that those who intend to engage with us should do so in an open and instructive manner because we are youth and would not intend to degenerate a discussionthrough name-calling and labelling". There was, however, the persistence of the same labelling, now called characterisation, which sought to reduce the debate of the ANCYL to chauvinism, justified by comrade Buti Manamela's waffles in an ANC Today article. After the YCL national committee meeting, Manamela made an insulting remark which isolated the president of the ANCYL from the organisation, undermining and questioning his intellectual capacity. This was, by the way, after YCL national chairman David Masondo warned that we should desist from that. During these events, a debate on nationalisation was happening with the full backing of the YCL and Cosatu. The Gauteng YCL in particular took to task any leader of the ANC who disagreed with nationalisation, and the national YCL questioned the bona fides of National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni when he disagreed with nationalisation. The Gauteng YCL released a personalised statement on Matthews Phosa - which was condemned by the ANC national working committee - and the youth league did not enter the discussion because we also felt Phosa was out of line in reassuring imperialists. Cronin then entered the nationalisation debate in an arrogant, heavy-handed fashion - isolating, undermining and insulting the president of the ANCYL. His input was reactionary and racist. Sadly, Cronin was responding to the ANCYL after having ignored the conceptual framework sent to him for comment and enrichment. The ANCYL responded and exposed the weaknesses of his input on nationalisation. Its response was consistent with what he did and what the Gauteng YCL did (on Phosa) and what the national YCL did (on Baleni); we said that in this debate, messiahs are not required to assist the youth to think. Cronin then read the article the youth league had asked him to read and subsequently apologised for his racism. The ANCYL accepted the apology, and instead of apologising back we took it beyond an apology and showered him with praise as one of our best intellectuals in the revolution, in the hope that he would come right and assist the discussion. But still Cronin continued his inputs with undertones that suggested that the ANCYL was doing its work on behalf of big business - basically suggesting that we cannot think and that we are corrupted by black businessmen. The president of the ANCYL was then booed by the delegates at the SACP special congress. The booing was sad because for the two weeks ahead of the congress the president of the ANCYL had been speaking about the need to engage with communists and to convince the congress to take a resolution on mine nationalisation. The youth league's first reaction to the booing was constructive and sought to indicate that we are not an enemy of the SACP and that we will speak further to consolidate on nationalisation. Then came Manamela's address to the congress and Cronin's television interview, in which he said the booing was a "lesson" to the president of the ANCYL. Insulting songs that were sung during the plenary session insulting the ANCYL president were not condemned by the leadership of the SACP and the environment was evidently hostile to fair engagement. Then the SACP central committee's political report contained overt insults aimed at the leadership of the youth league and even suggested that the leadership of the league was heavily funded, corrupt and basically unable to conceptualise anything in line with the movement's progressive programmes. The ANCYL was ready to constructively engage with the Communist Party on deeper ideological questions despite the heckling and booing from congress delegates. After a careful consideration and persuasion from provinces and regions, the youth league national working committee was left with no option but to respond in the manner it did. The address to the National Press Club was arranged before the SACP congress, and the ANCYL national working committee decided to use the platform to respond to some of the things that had taken place. Deeper ideological questions and debates should indeed happen so that we are able to altogether dismiss the SACP's misdiagnosis of the enemy. The SACP is not adequately radical and, at the pace it is moving, it will delay the attainment of the aims and objectives of the Freedom Charter. The attainment of the Freedom Charter's objectives should never be compromised, and all revolutionaries should without shame contribute to such. If that is the SACP and Youth League's common programme, then there is no crisis. If there is ever any crisis, it is the crisis of the SACP's ideological coherence and political programme. Otherwise, we are cool.
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- [YCLSA Discussion] The communists are insulting us, Floyd... Dominic Tweedie
- [YCLSA Discussion] Re: The communists are insulting ... Brendan Lee
- RE: [YCLSA Discussion] The communists are insulting ... Phumlani Dlamini
