POLITICAL POSITIONING
PALESA MORUDU: Reinvention of weasel wordsmith Cronin
Jeremy Cronin’s characterisation of Jacob Zuma as ‘not entirely uncompromised’ misses the mark
On April 22 2014, this column appeared under the headline "Facts are stubborn and history will not be kind." I wrote that, "Twenty years from now, we may consider which side of history we stood on as the Zuma project did unforgivable damage to Mandela’s legacy." Among those on the wrong side of history was the South African Communist Party (SACP). "Rest assured," I wrote, "the SACP will have an explanation for its slavish devotion to Zuma. But will it be a standard Stalinist mea culpa, à la the post-Soviet reckoning? Or will the likes of Jeremy Cronin claim that SACP leaders were really working secretly against Zuma all along?" Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait two decades to find out. Last week, Cronin announced at his party’s congress that he would not be available to run again for his long-held position of deputy general secretary. But he was available for major interviews, in which he tried to distance himself from President Jacob Zuma. The most exquisite specimen, written by ...
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