Vote ANC, SACP urges the alliance

From left are Mluleki dlelanga General Secretary of Young Communist League, Blade Nzimande General Secretary of South African Communist Party and Sidumo Dlamini President of Cosatu during the YCL rally held at Johannesburg City Hall. 030716 Picture: Boxer Ngwenya

From left are Mluleki dlelanga General Secretary of Young Communist League, Blade Nzimande General Secretary of South African Communist Party and Sidumo Dlamini President of Cosatu during the YCL rally held at Johannesburg City Hall. 030716 Picture: Boxer Ngwenya

Published Jul 4, 2016

Share

Johannesburg - The governing party’s alliance movement has told disgruntled ANC supporters to swallow their pride and vote for ward councillor and mayoral candidates who were imposed on them during the crucial municipal elections next month.

The SACP also came down hard on corporate capture, factionalism, and “depoliticisation”, characterising them as factors contributing to challenges dogging the movement.

SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said anti-revolutionary forces wanted to capture the ANC and government and co-opt them to become an “extension of the neo-liberal agenda”.

He called on the Young Communist League of SA (YCLSA) to make sure such agendas did not succeed.

The higher education mini-ster was speaking at the YCLSA Youth Month Rally in the Johannesburg City Hall on Sunday.

He was joined on stage by Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini, YCLSA national secretary Mluleki Dlelanga and his national chairman Yershen Pillay, among others.

“This crisis of a corporate capture is not a theoretical thing. It’s a threat that the alliance has identified, that we must defeat,” said Nzimande.

The SACP has been very vocal on allegations of corporate capture levelled against President Jacob Zuma’s friends, the Guptas.

The business family, owners of The New Age newspaper and TV news channel ANN7, have consistently denied the allegations.

“If we fail to defeat the in-fluence of money, you have no future as young South Africans,” Nzimande told the delegates, mostly young people from Gauteng and provinces including Mpumalanga and North West.

Factionalism, said Nzi-mande, was another ill which pitted comrades against one another in “fighting over peanuts”.

It could kill organisations, while depoliticisation of members was dangerous, he warned.

Nzimande also lashed out at the “endless” service delivery protests, saying they were a cue that something was wrong and that strong civic organisations should be built.

Dlelanga lashed out at the “politics of patronage” ravaging the tripartite alliance, and dismissed the EFF and DA as having nothing to offer the electorate.

Dlamini called on the disgruntled ANC supporters to offer their votes to the ruling party on August 3, whether they were happy or not with the ward and mayoral candidates.

The City of Tshwane was up in flames recently when ANC supporters, unhappy with the announcement of Thoko Didiza as the metro’s mayoral candidate, took to the streets, torching buses and municipal properties, looting shops, and blocking entry and exit points to the area’s townships.

Dlamini took a swipe at the EFF, saying the “red berets and overalls” seen in Parliament stood for anarchy, and that “no future will be built on anarchy”. He called on the YCLSA to engage the EFF at the ballot box during the local government elections.

@luyolomkentane

[email protected]

The Star

Related Topics: