YCLSA CONDEMNS THE REPORTED HECKLING AND BOOING OF SACP GENERAL SECRETARY AND MINISTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION

The Young Communist League of South Africa (uFasimba) condemns with the contempt it deserves, the reported heckling and booing of Cde. Blade Nzimande, General Secretary of the SACP and Min. of Higher Education on Friday by a group of people (said to be members of SASCO and NEHAWU) at the Tshwane University of Technology. Cde. Nzimande was expected to deliver a lecture as per invitation by the university.

We view the persistent, uncomradely and foreign culture as a form of promoting political intolerance and a means to shut down fellow comrades from constructive engagements that can help bring about solutions for the challenges faced by our society.  When heckling and booing happened at the Special Congress of the SACP, at the ANC Youth League NGC and at our own Congress, the leadership of the YCLSA took responsibility and condemned these actions, and we will continue to do so with the interest of promoting constructive debates.

We had hoped by now both SASCO, NEHAWU and the TUT management would have already come out strongly to condemn these actions. Instead what we have read was a tacit admission by SASCO that they organized the heckling and booing, if not, that they support it, as was evident in their attack of the General Secretary of the SACP in their subsequent statements through their Secretary General, Lazola Ndamase.

Irrespective of our collective and united commitment towards the attainment of free quality public education, an ideal we championed when it could easily be ridiculed; we will however never flinch when such legitimate demands are used for cheap politicking within or by SASCO.

The struggle for quality public education shall be waged, and won, parallel to the struggle in defense of the unity of our movement, its collective discipline and its paramount traditions of robust debates devoid of hoodlum-politicking. We anticipate students in our country, especially members of SASCO, to rise up from the gutter-politics displayed last Friday. The right to differ with comrades should never be confused with irresponsible conduct. We expect the best in debates from our future intellectuals.

We further condemn the silence by the TUT management, and call on them to swiftly take action against the culprits just as they did when former president Thabo Mbeki addressed and a student caused similar disruptions.

As the YCLSA we will fight any attempts to try and isolate Cde. Blade Nzimande from the leadership collective of the ANC and that of cabinet through innuendos and apolitical overtones, and to try and wage a war against the SACP by waging a war against the Ministry of Higher Education. We further challenge the cowards who used that platform of a memorial lecture as a way to raise issues they could not win within the SACP to come back into the structures of the SACP and debate these issues through proper protocols.

Statement issued by the YCLSA Head office, March 23 2011

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