Ramaphosa urges SACP leaders to adapt to changing conditions

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa says he is open to criticism by the tripartite alliance over the party’s decision to form a government of national unity (GNU) with the DA.

He was speaking during an SACP event to commemorate the life of struggle stalwart Joe Slovo. 

Ramaphosa said that while the SACP was against the GNU, both parties are united in pursuing the national democratic revolution.

Ramaphosa made his first public speech at an SACP event after its general secretary, Solly Mapaila, called into question his ability to lead the ANC’s renewal programme after the Phala Phala scandal.

The SACP has also been a vocal critic of the ANC’s decision to co-govern with the DA and Freedom Front Plus, calling the move neoliberal. Tensions between the two parties boiled over in December when the SACP declared it would contest elections on its own after the ANC’s failure to reconfigure the alliance for all its members to have equal status. 

The SACP is expected to meet the ANC this month. Should the SACP implement its decision, it would prove disastrous for the ANC which is already fighting wars on different fronts after the establishment of the MK party by its former president Jacob Zuma.

The SACP has threatened to contest elections on its own before. 

Speaking at the party’s event in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa said the ANC and SACP needed each other, arguing that one without the other would weaken the national democratic movement.

He said splinter parties had weakened the ANC, adding that if the alliance is serious about winning state power it has to be united. 

“If we walk separately, we must then accept that state power is going to be diffused and will no longer reside in the mass democratic movement.”

He said the government was committed to changing the lives of South Africans but admitted that hurdles including corruption had hampered this ambition. The liberation movement needed to revive the culture of political thought and understand political, social and cultural forces that shape society.

The alliance had to demonstrate intellectual honesty that characterised the work of Slovo. Ramaphosa said Slovo understood the value and task to liberate the people of SA and did not try to elevate his own status. 

“Today we find ourselves in an environment where positions of responsibility are often affiliated with access to power and resources. We have unwittingly elevated the status of responsibility within the state to the detriment of building our movement as a powerful instrument for social and economic change.” 

He said Slovo’s exceptional attribute was his ability to appreciate changing conditions during the struggle and anticipate the need for new approaches. 

“He was firm in strategy, but he was also flexible in tactics. He was among those who saw the need for a shift to an arms struggle in the midst of an intransigent government and a repressive apartheid regime.” 

Ramaphosa’s statements on Slovo could be viewed as an indirect message to the SACP leadership which has been frustrated about the waning influence it enjoys in the ANC and government.

The deteriorating relations between the ANC and the SACP have been expressed by Mapaila who has claimed that the party was not properly consulted in the formation of the GNU. During its special congress in December disgruntled SACP leaders said the ANC had failed to nominate its candidates in local government positions, considering this as a slight to the party. 

Ramaphosa said that during the liberation struggle Slovo realised a different strategy was needed when the party adopted the sunset clause which saw the ANC share power with the National Party. “This capability is as valuable and as necessary now as it was then when we negotiated the transition from apartheid to democracy. Those were difficult choices, those were almost like impossible choices,” he said.

“In the elections last year, the ANC suffered a great electoral setback. As a consequence the conditions in which we pursue the NDR [national democratic revolution] today are different from the conditions that prevailed in the first 30 years of our democracy.”

He said the electoral outcome did not represent a terminal outcome for the ANC, adding the elections sent a clear message to the ANC that it must act differently and decisively to restore confidence in the party.

The alliance had to access the balance of forces and review its tactical approaches accordingly, he said. It had to speak openly of its failures and take the necessary corrective action.

“We must also be willing to listen to one another. The ANC must be willing and prepared to listen to comrades who are saying the GNU is a mistake. Similarly, every one of us must also listen to the path being taken and look out for the dangers and make all of us alert to the dangers we are seeing.” 

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