Johannesburg - South African Communist Party second deputy secretary Solly Mapaila has called on the ANC and its members to do introspection on whether Jacob Zuma represents the “inner souls of the people of South Africa”.
Mapaila was the guest speaker delivering a memorial lecture on Nkosiphendule Kolisile - the late former Gauteng MEC for Economic Development and Gauteng SACP chairman - in Mohlakeng Community Hall outside Randfontein on Saturday.
Kolisile and his two bodyguards died in a car crash while on their way to his home in Port St Johns on July 22, 2013.
Urging ANC and SACP members to do introspections on Zuma, the ANC and the SACP, Mapaila said he took a leaf from the pro-democrats newspaper which was slanderous about the imminent election of Donald Trump to be the president of the US.
He said when it became imminent that Trump was going to win those elections, he said the New York Times wrote that the “office of the president represents the inner-soul of the people” - insinuating that Trump was not the right candidate for that job.
Trump has since won the election and is due to be inducted as president soon, but Mapaila feels South Africans need to ask themselves the same question.
“The people of South Africa, our own members, should ask themselves whether the president, the ANC and the SACP represent the inner-soul of the people. If we're not sure, we must go back to the drawing board,” Mapaila said.
While he felt short of providing an answer Mapaila, who is very critical of Zuma’s leadership, urged those who attended the memorial lecture to discuss the issue in their different branches to find a solution to problems facing the governing party and its alliance structures.
He also took a swipe at State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), accusing them of having failed the people of South Africa and failed to build infrastructure projects in the country. Mapaila attacked SOEs in reply to one of the concerns raised at the memorial lecture.
The SACP members on the West Rand and members of Nkosiphendule Kolisile Foundation were urging that South Africa must consider building a university campus on the West Rand. But Mapaila said their mission was likely not to succeed because state-owned enterprises had failed to fund developmental and infrastructure projects in the country.
“It was due to their failure that big businesses approached with the aim of building RDP houses in the country. The big businesses said that would end the housing backlog of our country within a period of three to four years. We had a problem with that proposal because those big businesses had massive capacity but were foreign owned. Giving them business was also going to benefit a few people or shareholders,” Mapaila said.
He said his party wanted small businesses like Nafcoc and others to benefit from those projects but SOEs had failed to generate those projects.
“It was Nkosiphendule Kolisile who emphasised during the 2006 local government elections that procurement should be given to small businesses and co-operatives. This was included in the ANC election manifesto. It was the idea of Kolisile. I now call it the Kolisile Clause,” Mapaila said.
He described Kolisile as a selfless leader who also wanted the SACP to contest elections on its own. Mapaila, on Saturday, appeared to differ with his boss, Blade Nzimande, on this matter.
Earlier this month, Nzimande addressed the end of the Red October month in which he told his supporters that the SACP would not divorce the ANC.
“We will not walk alone,” Nzimande said, but Mapaila differed with him on Saturday. He said their members must continue to discuss the matter saying it was Kolisile’s wish for the SACP to contest state power.
The Sunday Indpendent