Raymond letter to Umsebenzi
May I please have the opportunity to respond to what Blade Nzimande calls my ‘diatribe’ against the leadership of the tripartite alliance?
1. The words ‘harmful voices’ are not mine, but that of the sub-editors of Business Day, though I do not dissociate myself from them
2. It is said that I was silent about ‘Aids denialism’ and the attacks on Phosa et al. That Nzimande knows is a lie and any search of scholarly journals will show that I have raised such issues.
3. I am said to have ‘boasted’ of having asked nothing of Mbeki. I challenge Nzimande to show that I asked or got anything from Mbeki at any time in history. Nzimande is aware that I was appointed by Mandela, and that I had earlier been asked to serve in China, for it was discussed in a NEC committee that he chaired. Nzimande is well aware of the circumstances and conditions of my appointment.
4. The appointment as an ambassador to Sweden is allegedly related to my being ‘comfortably silent’ there, on questions like GEAR. Now as it happens when GEAR was adopted I was on the NEC and raised the processes surrounding GEAR. Tito Mboweni contested my claim that it had not followed processes within the ANC. I do not recall anything being said by any other member of the SACP leadership. I may be wrong, but it is true that the initial response to GEAR from the SACP spokesperson was not rejection
5. My ‘comfort’ as an ambassador was advantageous to Nzimande who stayed there and at that point was urging me to head the Chris Hani institute on my return. He continued to consult with me on my return and I wrote articles that were printed in the African Communist up till 2003 or 2004.
6. Relating to Cde Kader Asmal and myself Nzimande speaks of a suddenly renewed post-2007 activism on our parts. He knows that my fall out with himself and his associates relates to the SACP complicity with Zuma’s sexist mode of defence in his rape trial in 2006, when I first voiced my disagreement and the Party response was to describe me as ‘devious’ and an ‘arm chair revolutionary’ amongst other phrases.
7. I wrote an open letter to the Central Committee complaining about the failure to engage with my arguments and to rely on labelling. Nzimande did not circulate this.
8. I have not seen my interventions as what Nzimande calls an ‘intellectual custodian of the revolution’. I have made my contributions to assist in understanding the continually changing terrain on which the liberation struggle has had to operate. In so doing I have also sought to draw on and advance the legacies of the past, in a situation where these are treated contemptuously by Nzimande and his cohorts
Raymond Suttner
10 August 2008
August 12, 2008
Democracy, In the news