A Right to reply: Numsa believes SACP should lead working class *Castro Ngobese*
Numsa has taken note of the recent attacks levelled against the Numsa general secretary under the guise that Irvin Jim, together with Zwelinzima Vavi, the Cosatu general secretary, are leading an offensive against the SACP, its general secretary and national chairperson for purposes of regime change. Themba Msomi, who claims to be a Numsa member, has now joined this chorus with his article in *The New Age *newspaper on June 16. Whereas we believe that Themba Msomi does not exist in person and whereas Numsa’s membership system does not show such a person as belonging to Numsa, we nevertheless believe that voices inside of the SACP are generating a record on how Numsa and the Cosatu leadership (allegedly through Irvin Jim and Zwelinzima Vavi) are driving a supposedly ultra-leftist and “workerist” agenda in the current phase of our national democratic revolution. The leaking of the Cosatu central committee secretariat report to the Sunday Times and other media houses is a case in point. For the record, Numsa and its current leadership and constitutional structures, firmly subscribe to the perspective that the national democratic revolution is the shortest route to socialism and that the SACP is the vehicle of workers and the working class to lead the struggle for the emancipation of the working class in a socialist South Africa. No apologies made. It is matter of record that Numsa’s central committee has expressed serious concern with a number of problematic and neutral ideological stances taken by the SACP. This has been on a number of fronts such as its response to, among other things, the uncritical welcoming of the 2010 state of the nation address, uncritical response to the 2010 national budget speech, the party’s absence and leadership presence in the living wage struggles, which happened during 2010, including the public sector strike and the welcoming of the New Growth Path. Our critique of SACP positions cannot be construed by some mischievous and faceless individuals to mean that we do not regard the SACP as the vanguard of the working class or as having abandoned the struggle for socialism. On the contrary, the Numsa national office bearers had a highly successful bilateral with SACP leadership wherein we agreed to undertake the following joint work: 1. Analyses of the South African domestic situation and the global capitalist crises; 2. Analysing the pre- and post-Polokwane situation; 3. Dealing with corruption and making abuse of state power a key priority; 4. Nationalisation; 5. Engaging with Numsa’s draft socialist report; 6. Taking forward the perspective that the alliance should be the political centre; 7. Convening of a conference of the left; 8. Increasing membership of the SACP and the role of metalworkers through establishment of industrial units and political schools; 9. Release of the SACP recruitment team to work with Numsa on joint cadre development and political education; 10. Joint work on research; 11. Joint work on political education and ideological capacity building programmes; 12. Focusing and giving direction to leaderless communities protesting around service delivery; 13. Convening socialist forums; and 14. Providing much needed resources for the SACP. In this regard, Themba Msomi misses the plot. When Irvin Jim participates and articulates positions in public, he does so not in his personal capacity but as the democratically elected general-secretary of Numsa and lead representative of Numsa’s national executive committee and central committee. We continue to champion the struggle for the banning of labour brokers and would want to see Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC leading all of society in the eradication of this practice of modern day slavery. * Castro Ngobese, spokesperson for Numsa, responds to an opinion piece that appeared in The New Age on June 16, 2011 * http://www.thenewage.co.za/blogdetail.aspx?mid=186&blog_id=%20802 -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
