Alliance is being attacked - Mantashe

The ANC and the government will make sure education is declared an essential service, party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said. File photo: Boxer Ngwenya

The ANC and the government will make sure education is declared an essential service, party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said. File photo: Boxer Ngwenya

Published Jan 24, 2013

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Johannesburg - The alliance between the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress has always been attacked by the right wing and the ultra-left wing, the ruling party's secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday night.

“These attacks have always had a motive of... divide the movement, weaken it and ultimately defeat it,” he told a crowd at the Monash University in Roodepoort.

He said three pamphlets had alleged that the ANC was controlled by the SACP, which in turn was a proxy of Moscow that used terrorism as an instrument of undermining Western regimes and values.

These pamphlets were in a 1982 United States report headed “Soviet, East Germany and Cuban involvement in fomenting terrorism in South Africa”, the 1986 South African regime pamphlet “Talking to the ANC” and the 1986 pamphlet by the British Institute for the “study of terrorism, ANC the Soviet Task Force”, said Mantashe.

“The ultra-left attack has always been infantile, always asserting that the SACP has abandoned the struggle for socialism and is tailing behind the bourgeoisie movement,” he said.

“It attacked the so-called two-stage theory, expecting that the South African working class would proclaim socialism as its sole objective and not merely a national liberation, which leaves power in the hands of the bourgeoisie.”

He said the current liberal offensive on the ANC was a continuation of this attack, and an attempt to mobilise all forces that claim to have a grievance with the ANC and its government.

“The 'rooi gevaar' has been substituted with the corruption theme, wherein all ANC cadres and leaders are deemed corrupt, as opposed to the individual caught in the act.

“For this reason, the movement has an obligation to confront corruption in all its forms, real and perceived.”

Mantashe said the alliance between the ANC and SACP was based on principles and trust “derived from practical experiences of sharing trenches”. - Sapa

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