Inkandlagate: SACP's vanguard role in the cover-up

There is something worrisome about South Africa's developing and evolving body politic. Instead of dealing with principles and substantive issues, politics have been reduced to innuendo, conspiracy theories and personal insults. At the end of August, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) issued a statement were the union noted that the attacks directed at the Public Protector and that emanated from the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) had reached very dangerous conspiratorial levels.

As it is customary in the union, Irvin Jim as the leading official of Numsa issued the statement; questioning why the leaders of these organisations were resorting to slander instead of dealing with the findings of the Public Protector on Inkandla. As a union, we expressed amazement in what we considered as blind loyalty to President Jacob Zuma.

As it has now become the norm, none of the issues raised in the Numsa statement have been responded to. What we have received are tonnes of insults. Bonakele Majuba who is the SACP's provincial secretary in Mpumalanga accused Irvin Jim of "liberal elitism", of being a liar, of using Numsa to promote the programme of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and of "actively pursuing the agenda of those whose agenda is to portray our liberation movement asenemy number one of the people". As if these insults were not enough.

The national committee of the Young Communist League (YCL) which is a youth wing of the SACP "noted the opportunism displayed by certain individual leaders of Cosatu and Numsa for calling for the full implementation of the recommendations of the Public Protector on Inkandla".

In a press conference the Deputy-Minister in the presidency who in his spare time moonlights as the YCL's national secretary Buti Manamela launched a scathing attack on Irvin Jim and Cosatu's general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi; calling them "opportunists parading as queens of justice". Jim and Vavi's sin was to call for a rational debate on the report of the Public Protector on Inkandla.

As Numsa, we are not surprised that the arrows against those calling for due process in relation to the report of the Public Protector come from the SACP. The communist party, more than the ANC has been in the forefront of providing a cover-up for what is likely to be the biggest scandal to confront President Zuma since he assumed office in 2009.

Despite public lamentations for fullinvestigations on Nkandla and calls that those who are found guilty should be held liable, track record shows that the party has taken as its vanguard role; to provide cover for all the wrongdoing and violations related to the upgrades in President Zuma's homestead. At every instance where there have been attempts to throws sand onto the eyes of the South African public on Inkandla, you will find a leading member of the SACP.

It was the deputy national chairperson of the SACP Thulas Nxesi, acting in his capacity as the Minister of Public Works who ordered in October 2012 an investigation on the upgrades at the President's residence in Inkandla. It is Nxesi who until instructed by cabinet and due to pressure from the ANC, who classified the report of the inter-ministerial task team as "top secret".

In his foreword to the report, Nxesi was eager to declare that "attempts to lay the responsibility for the upgrade at the door of the President are misdirected and malicious". In his report, the "great communist" Nxesi declared as his first finding that "allegations that the President had used state resources to build or upgrade his personal dwellings are unfounded".

When the Public Protector issued a report that contradicted the inter-ministerial task team, what did Nxesi and his security cluster ministers do? They ran to the High Court for a judicial review of the report on the upgrades installed in the private residence of President Zuma; arguing thatthe report and the investigation trespassed the separation of powers doctrine, are against constitutional provisions that national security is the competence of the executive and that the remedial actions proposed were irrational.

Although the national deputy chairperson of the SACP was the prop forward in the scrum of deceit, it was not him alone who participated in the attempts to cover up the wrongdoings on part of President Jacob Zuma. SACP structures and branches were mobilised as part of the cover-up. For an example, the KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee of the SACP held in November 2012 resolved that rural development was one of the five government priorities.

The SACP province demanded that "the people of Inkandla should not be discriminated in government rural development programmes simply because they have the President of the Republic as one of their residents". Instead of protecting the right of citizens to congregate anddemonstrate, on the eve of the so-called Democratic Alliance (DA) march to Inkandla in November 2012, the SACP opted to incite the residents of the surrounding area. "We call upon the community of eNkandla and all decent South Africans to do all they can to protect the dignity of the president and the office he holds", declared the statement of the communist party.

The SACP mobilisation in defence of the President Jacob Zuma "at all costs" has continued unabated since the mid-2000s, in different areas and in different circumstances. One can be cynical and say that the investment by the SACP has yielded the desired results as leaders of the party have been rewarded with ministerial positions and posts in government at various levels of the state. Unfortunately, the policy of uncritical support for President Zuma has come at a cost to South African society.

The organisation that is meant to be the political party of the working class has become embedded in the state and its leaders have become nothing else but megaphones of neoliberal policies that the ANC government pursues. Another cost of the SACP's hero-worshipping of President Jacob Zuma is the corrosion of South Africa's body politic where principles matter no more and innuendo, insults and conspiracies substitute for actual political debates.

As it has done in the past for its unprincipled behavior, the SACP had to formulate a theory for its rotten political practices. In a political programme adopted at its national congress in July 2012, the SACP identified two opponents that had to be defeated: firstly the "new tendency" which it described as "a populist, bourgeois nationalist ideological tendency with deeply worrying demagogic, proto-fascist features; and secondly what the party calls "liberal constitutionalism".

While the "new tendency" referred to the rump in the ANC Youth League around Julius Malema, liberal constitutionalism includes those who insist on "good governance", "rule of law" and anti-corruption. According to the SACP, the "liberal constitutionalists" are everywhere. According to the party they "fight rear-guard action from within the liberation movement, the state, and through a network of the media, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academic institutional bases". So watch out before you raise issues about corruption or about a rule of law, you may be placing yourself in the liberal "constitutionalist camp" and on the firing line of bloodthirsty SACP commissars.

Andrew Chirwa is a president of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa).

This article first appeared in the M&G. 

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