Johannesburg - Nationalisation is an attempt by the ANC Youth League (ANCYL)
to save black economic empowerment "elements in crisis", and would
not help the poor, SA Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande
said on Tuesday.
"The call for nationalisation by elements within the
ANCYL, whose intention is to save these BEE (black economic empowerment) elements in crisis, and not to
address the interests of the workers and the poor in the country," he told
Cosatu's central committee.
Putting privately-owned assets in the hands of the state was
not "inherently progressive" as it depended on which class interests
were being advanced.
"We want to make it clear that the call is not a
genuine call to actually empower the workers and the poor.
"Nationalisation has been undertaken by Hitler,"
he said, adding that it was also conducted by the nationalist apartheid
government.
"Ten years from now there will be a renewed call for
privatisation."
Nzimande said the ANC's elective conference in Polokwane in
2007 saw a wide array of forces lined up to oppose the "previously
hegemonic bloc", led by former president Thabo Mbeki.
"This wide array of forces... was constituted essentially
out of an unholy alliance... between broad left forces opposing in principle
the strategic and tactical line of the 1996 class project, on the one hand, and
other forces who were essentially frustrated personal accumulators and populist
demagogues articulating a sense of anger and alienation particularly among the
youth sector," he said.
Cosatu, the SACP and the ANCYL joined forces to
support President Jacob Zuma to oust Mbeki at the Polokwane conference.
Nzimande said the latter grouping, consisting of
"frustrated personal accumulators and populist demagogues", exposed
itself at the ANC's national general council in 2010.
The advances of this grouping were not effectively rejected
and, as a result, "this dangerous demagogic 'vanguard' has acquired new
life, resourcing and arrogance.
"Yes, that's a vanguard, but a vanguard for
tenderpreneurs, not a vanguard for the workers and the poor. That is why it is
important to know that being a vanguard is not like a tender award, one for
you, one for me, but it is earned in struggle, on the ground," he said.
Nzimande also defended ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe,
who the ANCYL wants to replace with Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula at the
ruling party's next elective conference in 2012.