Spats between alliance leaders have been in the press recently. In these two articles, Ndlovu responds to the criticisms of Cronin, while Nondwangu replies to Mbeki's attack on Cosatu's anti-privatisation strike.

 

Responses to Cronin – what do they tell us?

This article is intended to share insights and promote vision. It has nothing to do with finding anybody guilty, or wrong or right. As I take the ballpoint and the paper, I do it with the responsibility of being a member and believer of the entrenched alliance. I am not going to pronounce on the alliance. However, I will draw my attention to the above topic.

It is now some time since cde Cronin was interviewed by an Irish academic, Helena Sheehan. The outcome of the interview has left a number of comrades talking and asking questions. I am not saying that my contribution to the discussion constitutes the final version. I am putting on record that every idea is correct and welcome, as there are a number of interpretations on ideas put forward. The persuasive and convincing play a critical role.

During the discussion of this saga, others arrived at a point of suggesting that the SACP is run by whites, which comrade Blade Nzimande was at pains to respond to. He termed these attacks on the SACP as 'racist remarks'. He went on saying that he "found the insinuation that he was controlled by the whites in his party objectionable".

One will also question the timing of the issue, did it have anything to do with the impending Congress or not?

Senior comrades, Smuts Ngonyama and Dumisani Makhaye were mostly distinguished through their contribution. Cde Makhaye in his broadside in the Sowetan newspaper, after a paragraph or two of pseudo-Marxist babble, got down to the real point – Cronin is white, middle class and the son of a naval officer. By criticising the African renaissance, Cronin is, Makhaye believes, calling for a 'white messiah' to lead the renaissance.

So the real crime is Cronin's race. No mention was made of his years in an apartheid jail. It is on record that Makhaye once complained in the National Executive Committee that the ANC was becoming a 'white pleasing organisation'. This issue is showing us how comrades can rely on the politics of smear and labels, which are not particularly earth-shaking. If Cronin was wrong to perceive a widening gap between leaders and the masses, what is the point of the ANC's 'Year of the Volunteer' – aimed at drawing the rank and file into the national programme.

Makhaye is a well-known tiger in taking people to task on policy debates. Others have suggested that Makhaye, Ngonyama and the like are a numerical minority in the ANC. However, I request to differ and present another opinion. What is striking is the freedom and confidence with which they express themselves. This suggests that they enjoy high-level support.

In the words of Professor Sipho Seepe, "Black intellectuals who refuse to succumb to this form of racial reasoning invite intense personal vilification, ridicule and intimidation." Other suggestions have been advanced that those of us critical of the Presidency should consider ourselves lucky that we have not been charged with treason or stoned to death – these words were borrowed from Dumisani Hlope. However, Ngugi wa Thiongo, the Kenyan writer, describes these as follows:

"The questioning mind has become suspect. The mind that wants to be judged against the highest possible professional standards is suspect. Originality is even more suspect."

Perhaps nothing exemplifies the consequence of willful debate more than the responses to Jeremy Cronin's timid suggestion that bureaucratisation of struggle and concentration of power are a threat to our democracy.

In one fell stroke he has had his entire struggle credentials questioned. He is castigated as a frustrated white male who cannot come to terms with loss of white privilege. His revolutionary comrades have seen it fit to remind us that he served in the apartheid navy, thus making him indistinguishable from Magnus Malan. His subsequent commitments and ideological contributions are rendered irrelevant. In the ensuing storm, the issues he raised are conveniently brushed aside. His whiteness is now on trial. It appears as if we have nurtured a culture in which labels are used to dismiss critics. Then this matter becomes a case of the chickens coming home to roost. It was a matter of time before we use the same tactics against one another.

Not so long ago, the leadership of the South African trade unions (Cosatu) was accused of counter-revolutionary tendencies when the union challenged the government's privatisation policy, not in toto. When Nelson Mandela called on the government to reconsider its position regarding the provision of anti-retroviral drugs, he was accused of being an agent of pharmaceutical companies and a national icon that has turned into a villain.

Nevertheless, Cronin should know better. That he should subscribe to the internal debate. It will not be correct and to a certain extent can show us class theory. If everybody is allowed to entertain any private thoughts, that can have the potential to seriously damage the Alliance . We may be heading for a serious problem to make an alliance a terrain of conflict.

This does not suggest that the role of the alliance members is limited to defending and to singing praises of government's leadership.

One respected comrade said to me, "Everyone is under suspicion, except the party boss". At a time when forces of unreason threaten our democracy, we need to restore rationality and reason. This requires men and women of courage and ruthless criticism of all that exists. Ruthless criticism enables us to imagine and creates new possibilities. It liberates us from seeing only part of the reality. Makhaye, to me has always been a vigilant, committed, diligent, dedicated and disciplined member of the alliance. However, is challenging the leadership's recalcitrant behaviour now a prerogative of African comrades only, as race or skin colour has never been used as a barometer to gauge, analyse and describe comrades' opinions? Yes, it takes two to tango.

 

Themba Ndlovu

Numsa organiser, Brits local

Source

Numsa News