TWO years ago this time, what was described as the forces of the left were a united group dedicated to defeating Thabo Mbeki's attempt to become ANC president for a third term.
The group ranged from the SACP, trade federation Cosatu, the Youth League, and a large number of ANC members. The youth league, both under Fikile Mbalula and Julius Malema, became the pincer with which all the unsavoury insults directed at Mbeki were channeled.
They were cheered by the elders who saw in their actions the ridiculing of a foe whose defeat had to be ensured, even if the usual decorum of interaction were suspended. Thus we saw Mbeki heckled in KwaZulu-Natal and called names. It served its purpose but also set a new standard of engagement, where insults were cool.
Today - as Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi noted last week when he addressed the SACP congress on the same university campus where Mbeki's fate was sealed - the unity against Mbeki has dissipated, and the centre is not holding. Instead, we see particularly strong language being used in the trading of insults between former co-conspirators.
Malema, young and brash to the extreme, has been articulating a socialist approach to the ownership of mines. One would expect the SACP to embrace this, but no, the articulation of the SACP position is almost to denounce nationalisation.
SACP secretary general Blade Nzimande explained this apparent contradiction by saying what Malema was calling for was not socialism, but black economic empowerment (BEE) capitalism using socialist language to bail itself out of the quandary induced by the recession.
"The new tendency is opportunistically using the historical documents and position of our movement to try and assert its new positions; [for example] an opportunistic use of the clauses on nationalisation in the Freedom Charter....
"What, in fact, appears as an articulation of the progressive clauses of the Freedom Charter is immediately betrayed by the naked class interests of trying to use the state to bail out dependent BEE capital.
"Together, led by the ANC and its broad movement, let us ensure that the noble task of black emancipation is not captured by a faction of parasites who use and abuse their political connections for their own private accumulation.
"Let us defeat javelin throwers and 'tenderpreneurs'. Let us defeat fronters, go-betweens, comrades who parade their blackness only in order to advance their own private interests by doing the bidding of their masters - well-entrenched monopoly," Nzimande said.
The problem with 'tenderpreneurs'
So in other words, the SACP also supports nationalisation but should not be championed by Malema and his tenderpreneur class. It is a frontal attack that saw Malema heckled and walk out of the SACP congress. Malema has angered Nzimande by earlier calling him a fake who claimed to represent working class interest, when he spent his time drinking red wine. Not one used to his own medicine, Malema has now said he will speak to President Jacob Zuma about the treatment he received.
To what end? Can Zuma publicly denounce the SACP and side with the young man he sees as a future leader of the ANC and the country? Or would that be too risky, given the influence the SACP now wields within the ANC?
In other words, for Zuma the question becomes who between Malema and Nzimande carries more weight in support out there within the ANC members. If Nzimande is right in saying the left has put Zuma where he is, can the beneficiary forget this?
The SACP is an organisation dedicated to the attainment of socialism, and its relationship with the ANC is to advance that course through the organisation. It uses all its strategies to entrench itself within the ANC so that its policies at best eventually mirror those of the SACP, or at least partly so.
It is this that has seen an aggressive push against ANC elements considered problematic in the prosecution of this struggle for socialism. The aggression has stiffened the backs of some non-socialists within the ANC, and Malema and Billy Masetlha, who was also heckled, have become the embodiment of resistance against Nzimande and the red brigade.
Numbers and influence
It now comes down to numbers and influence. Does the youth league - or that section of it that supports Malema - wield more power and influence within the ANC, as opposed to Nzimande and Mantashe?
The ANC goes to an elective conference in Bloemfontein in December 2012, three years from now. In political terms this is as short as it gets, as the jockeying for positions already under way bears testimony. How Zuma and other ANC leaders respond will be dictated by how they see their own chances of being re-elected in 2012.
In the end it boils to the question: has Malema bitten more than he can chew by taking on the SACP, Nzimande and Mantashe? Or is the SACP about to discover that there are no permanent friends but permanent interests in politics? We will not have to wait long to find out.
- Fin24.com