The overwhelming victory of the ANC in the April 2009 fourth democratic elections is the clearest statement by the workers and the poor of our country of their continued confidence in, and expectations from, the ANC-led government. Indeed the May Day 2009 COSATU rallies became both the rallying point for intensify working class struggles especially in the wake of the current global capitalist crisis, as well as a platform to celebrate the electoral victory of the ANC.

The significance and some lessons from the elections

The ANC electoral victory underlines other important things:

a.    It is a continuation and consolidation of the democratic advances
made at the Polokwane conference, and an affirmation of the popularity of the key decisions taken at that historic conference by the overwhelming majority of South Africans
b.    The electoral victory marks a significant rolling back of the huge
ideological offensive waged by sections of the elites against the ANC and its allies. The electoral victory has thus significantly exposed both the bankruptcy and the distance between these elites from the concerns of ordinary workers and the poor of our country. In many ways these election results are an expression of the growing class cleavage in wider society between the haves (including now a small black group of tycoons as represented by Cope) and the have-nots
c.    The huge defeat of the IFP, including a massive ANC victory in many
of its former strongholds in KwaZulu-Natal, may as well herald the beginning of the end of the last of the Bantustan parties in particular, and generally the final defeat of all what the former Bantustan parties stood for and their legacy. This confirms what we had always argued since the 1980s that all of these Bantustan parties and their regimes were extensions of the apartheid state that would not survive for long without being propped up by the apartheid regime
d.    The electoral victory was also a massive failure of collaboration
by sections of the elite, almost wholly supported by all of mainstream media, including the public broadcaster, to use the ‘rooi gevaar’, the ‘two-thirds gevaar’, and the ‘threat to the constitution gevaar’ to try and dislodge the ANC electorally.

However a deeper reflection on the ideological and class struggles on the electoral terrain also brings out into the open the extent of collusion by these elites against the ANC. Their main plank was that our constitution was under threat from an ANC government.

There is a serious attempt by these elites to use the constitution and other institutions of democracy to try and defend and advance their narrow class interests. There are increasing attempts to assert democratic rights (freedom of expression, of the press, independence of the judiciary, etc), without at the same time saying much about the need to transform, for instance, both the South African media and the judiciary. This is because an independent, but untransformed, judiciary will continue to protect the interests of the rich and propertied classes at the direct expense of the workers and the poor.

Whilst these elites make a lot of noise about alleged threats to the judiciary by an ANC government, they are completely silent about how the criminal justice system continues to fail farmworkers brutalized on white owned farms, and working class women who are victims of rape.

In fact, it can be argued that, the manner in which the media positioned itself during the election campaign, for instance throwing everything into building and supporting the image of Cope is precisely a reflection of the class orientation of mainstream media in South Africa.

These elite ideological struggles to push our institutions of democracy to serve their interests are taking place on a whole variety of fronts in South African society. Another instance is that of an increasing and strident voice on asserting of academic freedom in institutions of higher education, but silent on the need to transform the colonial type production and reproduction of knowledge in those institutions. Even worse, as the study on racism recently released by the Minister of Education shows, not only have we not been able to defeat the racial and patriarchal regimes in many of our higher education institutions, but instead these continue to be reproduced daily in these institutions. In such situations academic freedom, in practice, means the continuation of a racialised, patriarchal and elite forms of knowledge production; that is, academic freedom in favour of the continued reproduction of a colonial-type intellectual landscape. Unfortunately it still happens that at the head of this project are minorities who have continued to dominate our academia and intelligentsia.

Add to the above a South African media that has played more of an oppositional role to the ANC than a source of information for the population, the elite agenda has major weapons in its hands.

The above points to the need for the SACP, our alliance and the working class to intensify the ideological struggle on all fronts and, as our own South African Road to Socialism directs us, in all spheres of power and influence in South African society.

What is to be done?

We have highlighted the above issues not to argue for a reactive and defensive approach to this class offensive, but to underline the importance of building upon the mass energies unleashed during the election campaign to deepen a principled working class led national democratic revolution.

The overall challenge is that we dare not demobilize, but we need to redirect the energies unleashed by this election campaign towards building working class and people’s power in all spheres of society.

As the SACP we can proudly claim that we have achieved the main objectives of our main pillar in our 2009 Programme of Action, that of working for an ANC’s overwhelming electoral victory. Indeed thousands of communists and all our structures were mobilized in this effort.

However, it must also be understood that the vote for the ANC was not a blank cheque, but a well informed choice based on the expectation that indeed the ANC government still needs to do much more.

For a start, in line with the other pillars of our 2009 PoA – at the heart of which is the building of people’s power and ensuring public participation at local level – all our structures, leaders and cadres need to re-do the election trail, by going back to as many of the areas in which we campaigned as possible. The key task here would be to ensure that the many problems and challenges we identified are being attended to, whether it is lack of sanitation, housing, clean drinking water or existence of rampant corruption. In addition communities will need to be mobilized to attend to these problems and challenges, in line with the ANC’s own manifesto ‘Working Together, We Can Do More’!

The ANC Manifesto and our Medium Term Vision

Let us take this opportunity to thank all our Party cadres for the major contribution they made towards the ANC’s electoral victory. We also wish to congratulate all those communists who have made it into the legislatures, including those who have been appointed to additional positions of responsibility. However, we need to remind ourselves of the very clear directives given by our February Central Committee on communists deployed in government. This time around, the CC said, there must be a change in the manner in which communists relate and account to the SACP, much as they are deployed in the first instance as ANC cadres. In particular the SACP will not allow itself to be used as a stepping stone to positions in the ANC and govern
ment only to be abandoned by some of those cadres once they occupy such positions. Working together with our allies, the SACP shall seek ways to enforce its own right to recall in such instances.

Our cadres must be guided by both the SACP’s medium term vision as well as the ANC’s Election Manifesto. Whilst the two are distinct, there is no contradiction between the perspectives contained in these two documents. Instead there is a great deal of complementarity and dialectical inter-connections. For instance the MTV places emphasis on building working class hegemony in key sites of power and influence.
Indeed many of the commitments contained in the ANC’s Election Manifesto will not be realized unless the working class is organized to lead a struggle to build a stronger COSATU for decent work; people’s education committees for free, quality education; local health committees for quality health care for all; street committees to fight crime; and people’s land committees for rural development, land and agrarian transformation. In other words, the working class, using its organized muscle, must stamp its authority as the leading motive force in the national democratic revolution.

Similarly, the working class stands to benefit immensely from the most thorough and consistent implementation of the commitments contained in the ANC’s Election Manifesto, thus creating fertile conditions to realize some of the key objectives in our MTV.

Indeed the consolidation of the April 22 victory is a task being carried out on a terrain that is not of our own choosing, especially given the current global capitalist crisis and the emerging destabilizing threat of ‘Swine Flu’. But we must refuse to be cowed down by neo-liberal ideological blackmail about what is to be done about this crisis. We believe that the only sustainable solutions that can effectively deal with the current capitalist crisis are leftist solutions, not more of the same liberal dogma whose failures are the direct cause of the current crisis. At no stage in the history of our democracy have we needed a developmental state, buttressed by popular power, than at this point in time.

Communist Cadres to the Front, to build a better South Africa!

Asikhulume!!

Comrade President Zuma I am not a disgruntled member of the ANC, just angry. I am angry because you sent Jessie and the other President to school but not Malema. I am angry that no one has as yet visited me or given me any answers to where I will find the real ANC, so I hope that you wouldn’t mind if I write to you. I promise I will not write to Thabo, he will not take kindly to that and I may end up with Essop at my door.

I am also angry comrade President that your Minister of Education has banned the works of two performance artists. The good minister is not strong on freedom and democracy let alone freedom of expression. She reminds me of the old Nat cabinet ministers, sorry the white minority racists’ government. Don’t get me wrong – I also find these guys poor exhibitionists. All they are doing like most for our artists is just mimicking Paris and London. But to ban them in this day and age is not on. Does the good minister’s action not remind you of the wardens and censors on the Robben Island?

The Deputy Director-General in the Department of Education (DOE) argued that the art teachers are free to use the work of the artists in the classroom but they must first get the permission of all the parents. Now that is going where even the Nats never ventured. She sounds like our millionaire friend, your old mate from the Mbeki NEC, Smuts.

Please can you deal with this issue, I know you are opposed to censorship. Tell the folks in the DOE do get a life. The kids can download more dangerous nonsense like, for example, Blade’s speeches. If the Minister does not listen, you could deal with her at the list conference or better still why not redeploy her to the Dullah Omar Region. Let her do some leg work and get those comrades back into the movement.

I do have a few more issues about education, health, crime, GEAR, and so on but I will discuss this with you when you and the Terrors decide to visit me. I promise that I will serve you that vile booze that comrades in the Cape ANC drink. I am sure I will get in trouble with the wife, but since you have freed us from the heavy hand of Mbeki and restored democracy I feel free to make my concerns know. I shouldn’t have anything to worry about right?

But let’s leave what we do with the good Minister in charge of the DOE for the ANC list conference. I just hope that it all goes well. I did hear a rumor that some people would like to use it to raise awkward questions from the floor. I learnt from the Sunday Times that our comrade Mbulelo, who was last seen escaping from the troublesome Cape minus his manhood, is also hinting that there are some dark forces in the ANC who are going to remain in the movement – sorry party – and will work to undermine the movement – sorry party – from within.

Now comrade President if you do visit me I could tell you how to deal with the counter revolutionaries. From what I hear many of the counter revolutionaries are our public representatives in parliament who diddled the books. This act of subversion and counter revolution behavior was labeled by the right wing counter-revolutionary white controlled unreconstructed press as Travelgate. You should ask comrade Baleka for their names. You cannot trust anyone anymore. So lets us be vigilant and make sure that they don’t attend the list conference.
I see that your friend and brother swears that he never conspired against you. I know the bugger will say that he did not conspire against Mandela and did not have a hand in engineering Mandela’s humiliation in the NEC. Comrade President, I hope that you were not in any way party to humiliating our former president. I know you are a fearless warrior not afraid of taking anyone on for a good stick fight.

Comrade President I am sure you must be feeling sorry for that old cigar smoking, wine drinking, former Gauteng Premier. It seems that he visited his village and a comrade and son of the soil asked him why he was there when he had not done anything for his village.

Now that son of the soil has the right political attitude. You should send our head of elections to recruit this guy. I sure he will win the chief and his subjects for the National Democratic Revolution. I will bet my government pension that if you were to go to your home village and tell them why you went to Washington no one would question your commitment to the village and the poor.
Comrade President I hope that you are not following in Thabo’s footsteps – every time he had a bee in his bonnet he ran to Washington. You should send Blade in your place; he has a great deal of time on his hands since leaving the IFP. Please stay at home.

One more thing did you speak to the Minister of Arts and Culture about his spokesperson, you know the guy who has a mouth bigger than Terror’s.

Yours,

Omar Badsha.

P.S.
I cannot seem to find the real ANC in the Western Cape.

On 12 August 2008, History Matters printed a response that I wrote to Blade Nzimande’s article in Umsebenzi, which contained a number of lies about me. I challenged each of these and before sending it to History Matters I sent it to Umsebenzi online and later to ensure that there was delivery, sent a fax to SACP HQ, a copy of which is in the possession of History Matters.

Umsebenzi online has not acknowledged receipt of my rebuttal of Nzimande’s pathetic and cheap lying about me. Why is the current SACP leadership incapable of engaging issues and reliant on labelling and untruth? Clearly it cannot defend the displacing of its programmes by Zuma-isation.

Phillip Dexter has confirmed that this correspondence is authentic. Niether Solly Mapaila nor Blade Nzimande have responded to requests for comment.

The specific background is that Dexter was suspended a week before the party’s conference last year at which he was to have presented a report on the party’s finances. The report was never presented. The suspension was to last for a year.

The correspondence relates to the Politburo’s intention to continue the suspension for a further period because, according to Nzimande’s covering letter, Dexter has failed to adhere to the conditions of his suspension. In response, Dexter points out that the charges are so vague as to be meaningless and flout due process. He contests that his suspension was ever conditional. Dexter has also written a 4-page letter to Nzimande in which he accuses him of hypocracy and deceit, mainly on account of Nzimande’s vocal support of due process in the Zuma saga, but abandonment of the same in the disciplinary procedures of the SACP. His letter to Nzimande is copied to Gwede Mantashe, Jeremy Cronin, Pumulo Masualle, and Benedict Martins. He also comments on suggestions of corruption relating to two separate donations to the party, of R500 000 and R600 000 which never made it to the treasurer’s office. All three letters can be downloaded in a single file (PDF, 368kb).

The larger background of course is the deepening division within the SACP. Nzimande is accused of clamping down on debate within the party and purging those who don’t toe the line, which includes among other features, unwavering support for Jacob Zuma. Other former leaders that have fallen foul of the party include Mazibuko Jara and, as we’ve seen on this blog, Raymond Suttner.

Elsewhere on this blog, you can read Blade Nzimande’s article Justice is Indivisible, Raymond Suttner’s reply to Nzimande, and Mervyn Bennun’s commentry on the growing debate. I particularly recommend Bennun’s piece, it is an excellent analysis.

These letters will certainly fuel this debate and we publish them because we feel it is important that this debate is encouraged.

For more background, several press articles and op-ed pieces give a fuller picture:

Hammer, no sickle (M&G Editorial, 13 July 2007)

Crunch time for the SACP (City Press, 7 July 2007)

SACP purges its finance chief (City Press, 23 June 2007)

SACP divided on Zuma (M&G, 21 April 2006)

Kader Asmal, Blade Nzimande, and Raymond Suttner are honoured and respected leaders in the anti-apartheid struggle. They are brave comrades who have dedicated their lives to our freedom, who have made great sacrifices and carried heavy loads in times of great danger. They are some of my role-models and when relating to them the word “comrade” comes respectfully to my lips, from my position over decades as a ordinary rank and file member of the ANC (my membership number is WC142947, in case anyone wonders).

One of the claims of the Left is that we encourage and are not afraid of debate — even vigorous debate — and mutual criticism and openness within and between our formations; yet it seems, at the least disagreement, that the only thing we hate more than what I thought was the real enemy is each other. We swiftly abandon serious debate and challenge, and shed all inhibition against opening a personal front in which no vituperation, verbal contempt and venom is too vicious.

It is not pleasant to read what comrade Nzimande has written about Kader Asmal and Raymond Suttner: from the sheer loathing that comes across, it is hard to imagine that Asmal and Suttner might ever have made any worthwhile contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. They, however, are better placed than I am to react in detail — if they feel that they should — to what Blade Nzimande has said of them. I can’t contribute usefully to that topic, except to express my distaste and dismay at what Blade Nzimande has written; I don’t think that he has improved the quality of his analysis of the legal issues relating to Jacob Zuma by making these personal comments. They are unworthy of someone who stands in the shoes of figures as Chris Hani, Joe Slovo, Yusuf Dadoo and Moses Kotane.

Blade Nzimande is correct to point to the disgusting manner in which Jacob Zuma was treated by Bulelani Ngcuka when the latter was National Director of Public Prosecutions. It was a disgrace and unlawful for a prosecutor, in our adversarial system of criminal justice, to state publicly that “whilst there is a prima facie case of corruption against the Deputy President, our prospects of success are not strong enough. That means that we are not sure if we have a winnable case”.

It does not matter to whom the words relate. As the Public Protector explained, a prosecutor’s task is to decide whether or not there a reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution, and only after the prosecution’s witnesses have been heard and cross-examined will the judge or magistrate alone decide whether there is a prima facie case for the accused to answer to. Ngcuka simply usurped the function of the judge and added it to his own as prosecutor, and announced that Jacob Zuma was guilty but that he should not be put on trial in case he was acquitted – which would be a miscarriage of justice! If Ngcuka — a lawyer, of all people — had not resigned shortly after the Public Protector’s report was published, a Ginwala-type enquiry ought to have been called to consider his removal from office.

The Public Protector’s report is an excellent manual on aspects of how our criminal justice system should work, and though he is not a judge he had to deal with the matter as a judge would do: determine the facts and the issues to be examined, examine and state the legal rules that apply, and then apply them to the facts to reach a conclusion.

It is necessary to understand the constitutional issues to appreciate why the Civil Right initiative by Kader Asmal is so urgently needed, and to understand why Blade Nzimande’s remarks about Asmal and Suttner are so objectionable.

I doubt that Blade Nzimande would disagree with the above contextual analysis of the Public Protector’s report, but it is here that Nzimande goes seriously awry. There is no question in the least that judges are open to criticism: our legal system depends on it. With neither hesitation nor apology, we lawyers — and academic lawyers are surely the most merciless, for that is our duty in a free society — subject what judges decide and how they decide it to the narrowest and most rigorous scrutiny and we make, if we conclude that we must, the fiercest challenges. In its short life, not even judges in the Constitutional Court have been spared. What Blade Nzimande brushes aside is that the scrutiny and challenges are based on the law, and the Public Protector’s report is supportable only because, like a judge’s decisions must be, it is based on the law. If the laws are just and legitimate, then if they are applied correctly the results are just and legitimate; and this is a sound definition of what the Public Protector did. He was right not because the complaint was by Jacob Zuma — he was right because it is unlawful for a prosecutor to treat anybody thus.

The same standard applies to the Constitutional Court and to any other court, and this is why Blade Nzimande’s outburst against Kader Asmal and Raymond Suttner is so wrong. He stated that he was disappointed but not surprised that Zuma lost in the Constitutional Court, and he is using this defeat to place it within a conspiracy against Zuma by an untransformed legal system, and he damns to hell anyone who doubts his conclusion. He clearly thinks that the Constitutional Court was wrong, that Jacob Zuma should not be put on trial, and that if a trial does take place that Jacob Zuma should be acquitted. Others have said, and it appears that Blade Nzimande agrees, that Jacob Zuma is innocent and should not be prosecuted: the entire process is a conspiracy against an innocent man.

On what grounds? It appears that the grounds for this claim are that the case against Jacob Zuma is brought by a justice system that does not “prioritise the advancement of the poor, the marginalised, and (the eradication of) all vestiges of apartheid and unequal (class) access to basic human rights and the legal system itself”.

It appears now that the Constitutional Court is counter-revolutionary and untransformed because it did not take Jacob Zuma’s politics into account when considering whether the searches which were conducted were lawful or not. In other words, the judgment in the Constitutional Court would have been in order had the searches been conducted during investigations into the affairs of someone else, but are wrong because they were to the prejudice of Jacob Zuma.

The supporters of Zuma including Blade Nzimande do not criticise the judgment of the court on the basis of a close analysis of the law. Instead, they have put the judges on trial and concluded that the only just and tolerable verdicts are those that set Jacob Zuma free. Speakers from the ANCYL have said as much; the evidence that a court may hear is immaterial, because they have already decided that Zuma is innocent.

The attack on the Constitutional Court is also a reaction to the express opinion of ten of the eleven judges, from which the eleventh expressed no dissent in his separate judgment, that courts should discourage litigation preliminary to criminal trials that appears to have no purpose other than to avoid the application of section 35(5) of the Constitution (which ensures that evidence which has been unfairly obtained must be excluded if its admission would render a trial unfair or prejudice the administration of justice) and to delay the commencement of a trial contrary to section 35(3)(d) (which states that every accused person has a right to a trial which begins and is concluded without unreasonable delay). These are totally reasonable and correct observations to make about the criminal justice system, but the only objection which this unanimous view of the eleven judges has elicited is based on the fact that the accused person involved is Jacob Zuma.

In contrast, the young man accused of murder in the Skierlik case is hardly concerned with the advancement of the poor and the eradication of inequality in South Africa; would the same complaint against the Court be levelled were he to exercise his equal constitutional rights to make various preliminary challenges, and were the Constitutional Court to make a similar comment? Would this provoke the same criticism from Nzimande? Are each of the eleven judges in the Constitutional Court a “counter-revolutionary” and an untransformed judicially-robed traitor to the Constitution because they have made a finding against Jacob Zuma?

Raymond Suttner has done no more than what one does in democratic politics: he has published a reasoned review of political issues, and readers are entitled to read a reasoned response on the points he has raised. Yet nowhere is this to be seen in Blade Nzimande’s reply, which treats Suttner’s essay as a outrageous blasphemy against the only possible truth — one which need not be proved by a reasoned case as it is the only one permissible, and must never be questioned. Blade Nzimande has simply treated loyalty to Jacob Zuma as a religion to be followed by all on pain of being “eliminated”, substituted religion for politics, and dealt with Raymond Suttner and Kader Asmal accordingly as sinners beneath contempt for daring to question holy gospel.

Jacob Zuma stated his own position in the context of the issues was. Outside the court in Pietermaritzburg he warned that if he is convicted he would, according to the newspapers, “take others down with him”.

But what does mean? Regardless of whether he is guilty or innocent, if Zuma knows of such crimes then why has he not disclosed these matters to be investigated? Is he attempting to ensure his progress to the presidency of South Africa by threats? Only a court can decide whether a person is guilty or not, but Zuma’s own words put this question in mind: Is he an accessory to these crimes and guilty as such? If there are answers, why does Blade Nzimande write as he has done about those who ask these questions?

These matters relate to further grave issues. In the course of his litigation, Zuma and his supporters have claimed that the charges he faces are the result of a conspiracy against him, led by President Mbeki and involving many other high officers of the State, to prevent him from becoming the President of South Africa. A dreadful plot to abuse state power in such a way must involve the gravest crimes against the security of the state and the administration of justice: nothing less than treason, sedition, perjury and subornation to perjury, frustrating or attempting to frustrate the course of justice and various criminal conspiracies must be involved. Surely it is the duty of those who believe this to be true to lay charges against those said to be involved?

It should be noticed that these accusations made by Jacob Zuma against President Mbeki are against someone who is himself a member of the ANC, and who is accused of plotting against Zuma while himself the President of the ANC. Has our honoured liberation movement come to this state of division and mistrust?

Does it mean nothing that Julius Malema and others supporting Zuma have warned that they will not accept a guilty verdict against Jacob Zuma?

It is against this background that Blade Nzimande has attacked those who feel as Kader Asmal does that our Constitution is in peril; it is against this background that Blade Nzimande makes no effort to address the questions raised by Raymond Suttner; and it is against this background that the ANC’s history is being turned to ashes.

Those who make such accusations and threats, and who reject the institutions of our hard-won Constitution for the sake of one person’s ambition to be the president of South Africa, are playing with fire.

This is the road to civil war.

Since about 2003, especially after that notorious statement by the former head of the NPA, that there was a prima facie case (of
corruption) against the President of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, but the case was not winnable in court, one of the most unjust, public character assassination of an individual in recent memory was unleashed on Cde Zuma. This was immediately followed by the secret press briefing held with hand-picked black editors; a briefing that practically embedded most of South African media to the NPA, especially on matters relating to Cde Zuma.

This has given rise to some of the worst and most blatant disregard, if not perversion, of the basic precepts of our constitutional dispensation. The most serious perversion of the principles upon which our constitution is founded has been that of seeking to treat the manner in which criminal investigations are handled as separate from, and not part of, our justice system. In this sense justice is simply reduced to court processes. The calls, falsely attributed to Cde Zuma, for him to have ‘his day in court’, have blatantly ignored the extent to which he has been subjected to an unfair investigation, as if justice is only dispensed at the point of appearance before a court of law.

The SACP re-affirms its total commitment to protecting and upholding our constitution at all times, and that everyone is equal before the law. To this end our constitution, and the structures of the criminal justice system including the judiciary, must be defended and respected by all.
Whilst we maintain our firm commitment to the principle that no one is above the law, this precept should equally apply to the institutions of our criminal justice system that they, including its officials, are also not above the law, and therefore cannot act outside the prescriptions of our basic law.

To fight for the respect of our institutions of criminal justice however does not mean that these institutions are sufficiently transformed and will always act in the best interests of all in society. They need to be transformed. For us, the appointment of blacks and women (as prosecutors, judges, high ranking police and judicial officers, etc) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the transformation of the institutions of our criminal justice system. A fundamental requirement for total transformation is the building of a legal dispensation whose values and practices advances the basic goals of our democracy, tackling class, national and gender inequalities in our society.

There is therefore no contradiction between a fair and impartial judicial system, and its orientation and bias towards advancing these fundamental goals of our revolution. In fact the fundamental condition for a fair justice system is its transformation. In other words it must be a justice system that is not oriented towards elites and their agendas, but a justice system that prioritises the advancement of the poor, the marginalised and to eradicate all vestiges of apartheid and unequal (class) access to basic human rights and the legal system itself.

An even more fundamental requirement in simultaneously transforming and protecting our constitution and the criminal justice system is vigilance on the part of our people to ensure that this system is not abused or used towards goals that are at variance with its intended objectives.

There is also a disturbing trend, especially around matters relating to the President of the ANC that of elevating ‘the interests of justice’
above the fundamental rights of individuals as contained in our Bill of Rights. For instance those who have been arguing for Zuma to have his day in court have been conspicuously silent on the very serious abuse of the NPA in handling its investigations against Cde Zuma. This is seemingly informed by a dislike of Zuma, especially by sections of the elite, and for them abuse of his rights becomes tolerable because, according to them, Zuma is not fit to be President of the ANC or our Republic. This is an extremely dangerous attitude, which can only take this country to the brink, and become a justification for all sorts of violations. This will come back to bite us in the future.

For example it is interesting, if not curious, as to why a senior member of the ANC, like Prof Kader Asmal, would launch a civil rights movement only in response to many legitimate criticisms levelled at some of the behaviour by elements within our criminal justice system. Yet there was no such movement formed in response to the very many blatant violations of Cde Zuma’s rights as confirmed by, amongst others, the Public Protector and the judgement by Judge Msimang. Frankly there can be no genuine civil rights movement based on a fragmented and selective approach to fundamental matters of justice and abuse of human rights.
The best that such a movement can be, will not be a civil rights movement for the mass of the people of our country, but a movement for the elites, who are clearly disgruntled about the outcomes of the ANC’s Polokwane conference.

Before one gets accused of being conspiratorial and intolerant of different views within our movement, let’s examine Cde Kader Asmal’s own past consistency on the principles upon which he purportedly now wants to found his South African version of the Irish ‘civil liberties movement’. When President Mbeki openly denied that HIV causes AIDS, Kader Asmal was completely silent on this. Where was his activism to protect the constitution and right to life of the main HIV/AIDS sufferers in our country? When the SACP and COSATU were publicly mauled for a different view on HIV /AIDS, where was this great, ‘civil liberties’ activist. Loudly silent! When Ramaphosa, Sexwale and Phosa were accused of plotting against President Mbeki, where were was Asmal?
When Mugabe and ZANU-PF started degenerating into a military machine against the people, what did he say? Nothing!

AAsmal tells us, through the Sunday Times, ‘Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.’ We completely agree and that is what he did on these matters that are of fundamental importance to our constitution and the human rights of the overwhelming majority of our people.

This blatant selectivity in approaching matters of justice and human rights is also manifested in Raymond Suttner’s diatribe against the leadership of the tripartite alliance. For instance Suttner projects the Alliance secretariat as an embodiment as ‘harmful voices’, yet the likes of Suttner were completely silent when the real harmful voices on Aids denialism and attack on Phosa, Ramaphosa and Sexwale were dominant!

Suttner boasts in the Business Day that he never asked anything from Mbeki, yet when he was appointed South African ambassador to Sweden, at his own request (!), around 1996/7 he kept comfortably silent against the really harmful voices adopting GEAR; the harmful voices accusing Ramaphosa and others of conspiracy and the really harmful voices of aids denialism from some of those who appointed him. What did he say? Where was his own voice? Comfortably silent as an ambassador!

How do we explain this long lapsed but suddenly renewed post-2007 activism of theirs, in the light of the need for revolutionary consistency on matters of justice and human rights? The answer is that the target and anger is directed at the new ANC leadership, especially President Zuma, and the current SACP and COSATU leadership, which dares to consistently articulate working class interests, especially if these are outside the patronising intellectual guidance and self-righteous arrogance from some self-annointed ‘intellectual custodians’ of our revolution.

The SACP is also deeply concerned about the fact that Cde Zuma has been a subject of a ‘dual’ investigation by the NPA, one an official, unending, ‘criminal’ investigation, and through an illegal intelligence gathering process, as shown by the Special Browse Mole report. It was for this reason that the SACP took the trouble to request the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence to investigate this matter, and found that what the Scorpions were involved in was illegal.

The NPA has colluded with elements in the media to also ensure that Cde Zuma is tried and condemned in the court of public opinion.

For justice to be seen to be done, it is also important for government to take decisive action to promote justice, especially in areas of its own competence. I am afraid government has a lot to answer for when it comes to lack of action on many fronts where the NPA has abused its authority. For instance, nothing that we are aware of has been done about the ‘prima facie’ statement, the recommendations of the Public Protector and the Hefer Commission on press leaks by the NPA, and now on the Special Browse Mole, almost a year after we were promised decisive action.

The SACP has consistently raised its serious concerns about the abuse of Cde Zuma’s rights, not only for the sake of Zuma as an individual, but as part of the struggle and the necessary vigilance to protect the rights of all South Africans.

It is for this reason that we must all, as South Africans, fight for our constitution to be upheld consistently and not selectively, as justice is indivisible! For these reasons the SACP calls for an open and transparent process, involving our people, into any investigations into our criminal justice system.

*
Asikhulume!!*
Umsebenzi Online

*Volume 7, No. 13, 6 August 2008*

* Justice is indivisible
<http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=pubs/umsebenzi/2008/vol7-13.html#re
dpen>

Read Raymond Suttner’s reply here.

Read Mervyn Bennun’s reply here.

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