Johannesburg - The relationship between the SACP and the ANC - who are key tripartite alliance partners - appears to be teetering on the brink, with just two months before the crucial local government elections.
This is as the tension over the candidate lists for the municipal polls and state capture continues to simmer.
In an unprecedented move, the SACP announced yesterday that it would not endorse some of the ANC candidates who were allegedly chosen fraudulently.
So outraged is the SACP that it now plans to ditch “palace consultations” on state capture and mobilise rolling mass action against the ANC-led government.
The hardline stance was taken by the SACP’s central committee meeting, which met over the weekend to dissect the current political situation in the country.
While affirming support for the ANC in the local government elections, the SACP was adamant that it would not “endorse the corrupting of the ANC processes” that led to the nomination of the ward candidate lists. The SACP said it could not simply pledge support to the ANC on a blank cheque.
“We still reaffirmed our position that we will not support ANC candidates who have come through defrauding or in violation of the ANC prescripts,” said SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande.
“Affirming our support for the ANC means we must also affirm that the ANC processes must be followed.”
This is likely to further heighten the already frosty relations in the tripartite alliance and could potentially weaken the ANC in the upcoming elections.
While the two parties have had differences over some of the ANC’s economic policies, among them labour broking and the national youth wage subsidy, disputes over state capture and the candidates have precipitated the fractured relations.
The SACP has complained of the manipulation of the candidates, especially what it had called the sidelining of alliance partners in some provinces - notably KwaZulu-Natal, where the disputes have also led to killings.
However, both ANC president Jacob Zuma and secretary-general Gwede Mantashe have downplayed the revolt that has broken out ahead of the submission of candidate lists to the Electoral Commission of SA.
On Saturday, Zuma told supporters at the ANC Gauteng manifesto rally at FNB Stadium that the bitter fighting over candidate lists was “democracy at work”. He told the aggrieved members to accept the process and that no changes would be made.
Mantashe, on the other hand, was also unequivocal after submitting the list to the IEC, saying many of the complaints sought to undo the party’s three principles of 60 percent continuity, gender parity and 20 percent youth representation.
On Sunday, however, the SACP was not in a compromising mood, insisting that there had been many irregularities preceding the compilation of the final list. Nzimande said the SACP had raised these at the ANC national list conference.
He emphasised the unity of the alliance, saying this was essential to ensure that key municipalities such as Joburg did not fall into the hands of the DA. “In the course of the election campaign we should not be in denial about the many challenges facing workers, the urban and rural poor, and a broad spectrum of middle strata, professionals, students and the youth in general,” he added.
The SACP reiterated its warning about the dangers of state capture, which has centred around the influence of Zuma’s friends, the Gupta family, over the state-owned entities.
Further angering the SACP, Mantashe revealed last week that an ANC investigation into allegations of state capture by the Gupta family had become “fruitless”. The SACP was quick to call the ANC’s probe a whitewash and a farce.
Nzimande reiterated the SACP’s stance on Sunday, condemning the the Guptas for “the most brazen forms of buying political influence and of even directly seeking to usurp executive powers”.
The Star