GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Blade Nzimande’s failed politics of compromise

The SACP’s decision to contest the 2019 national elections is something of a distraction. The real issue is the re-election of general secretary Blade Nzimande.

This is the man who has led the SACP into a crisis so profound that, for the sake of its own credibility, it has no option but to try to formally disassociate itself from its alliance partner, the ANC. And yet, he was re-elected.

That Nzimande led the SACP into the crisis is a matter of record. A champion of Jacob Zuma, co-responsible for his rise to power and the augmentation of his demagogic self-interest, it was Nzimande who attached his party to Zuma’s coattails.

At the height of Zuma’s power, it was Nzimande who took to the streets to call for The Spear, the controversial Brett Murray painting of Jacob Zuma, to be obliterated. "Don’t sell it," he would tell the baying mob, "it must not leave this country, it must remain here, it must be destroyed once and for good."

How the loyal lapdog barked and yapped at the feet of his master. How the worm turns.

"We feel betrayed. Personally, I feel betrayed," Nzimande said at the SACP’s conference this weekend. "Our trust has been broken."

That is one way of looking at it. Another is to say that Nzimande’s judgment is appalling. Any person incapable of distinguishing a demagogue from a democrat should not lead a political organisation. But that, of course, would necessitate something called agency. And South Africans don’t do that.

We are a nation of victims. Poor Nzimande was tricked. His principles are too malleable, his insight too feeble and his convictions too indistinguishable from expediency. He was duped. Hook, line and sinker. But he was re-elected. Because it’s not his fault. It never is anyone’s fault. If you want to succeed in South African politics, all you need is someone to blame.

But there is plenty of blame to assign.

On Nzimande’s watch, the EFF have destroyed the Young Communist League. As the old guard was re-elected at the conference, given yet another chance to run further down the path to oblivion, you have to wonder, 23 years into democracy, where are the young communist leaders? Isn’t that a leader’s job, to produce the next generation?

There is no next generation of young communists. It has been eaten alive by the EFF; rendered virtually nonexistent, certainly redundant. When was the last time you heard the Young Communist League’s position on anything? Does it even have a position on anything anymore? If it does, to what end? You could ask the same question of the SACP itself.

But Nzimande was re-elected.

And what of the revolution? How is that coming along? That a communist party’s final move on the grand political chessboard should be to contest democratic elections suggests it really has run out of ideas.

Nzimande has escaped proper examination because he has found there is much political capital in opposing Zuma. He dominates the SACP’s public profile as it has no vision of its own.

On what basis does it intend to contest elections in 2019? Vote for a socialist revolution? Now there is an oxymoronic sentiment if ever there was one.

The SACP has managed to play its game on the assumption it is a powerful influence on the ANC and the alliance. And this is the key point: inherent to its decision to stand alone is an admission of failure. The politics of influence has failed; it has no influence at all. You would think the leader would take some blame for that. But no, Blade Nzimande was re-elected.

And yet it can’t even leave properly. So fragile and irrelevant is the party that it cannot break cleanly. For then obscurity really would follow. Instead, there’s some half-in, half-out proposition. Half-baked is what it is. To the extent that it is difficult to work out what exactly the SACP has actually decided about elections, it’s so convoluted and confused. The nonsense that has come out of that conference defies belief.

"Our commitment to elections is guided by our overarching strategic commitment to advance, deepen and defend a radical NDR [national democratic revolution], the South African road to socialism," says Jeremy Cronin.

"Our strategic objective in regard to state power is to secure, not party-political, but working-class hegemony over the state, as part of our wider medium-term vision to build working-class hegemony in all sites of power."

Good luck fitting all of that on an election poster.

Cronin says, "Some leaders in the ANC look up to the SACP in light of the current chaos in the ANC. They believe that, as their strategic ally, we can rescue the ANC." He believes the SACP has never been more important. What drivel. The SACP has never been more irrelevant, that’s the final takeaway from all of this.

The SACP clings to a delusion, for that is all there is left to cling to. That and ambiguity. If schizophrenia stood for election at the SACP conference, it would have been elected by a landslide.

Contest elections, influence the ANC. Support Zuma, oppose Zuma. Describe the alliance as weak, refuse to leave the alliance. Contradiction runs through the SACP on every conceivable level, from political decisions to ideology.

"Capitalism is an unsustainable system," says Cronin, "it is based on the premise of continuous growth." Only a party that is complicit in the manifestation of a recession could wax lyrical in this way about growth. Has the Zuma administration or the alliance ever known growth and what it can achieve?

It is like a person who has destroyed their toy car saying toys never bring any joy anyway.

Why is the SACP not a parasite? It attached itself to Zuma in exactly the same way the Guptas attached themselves to the state, only politically

Here is the SACP’s response to the National Development Plan. If you wish to understand why the SACP has been unable to achieve anything of substance just read it. It is a testament to indecision if ever there was one. The opening line reads, "In approaching the NDP we should not begin, as some have done, with the intention of simply approving or rejecting it." A full 9,669 words later and you are none the wiser. Half-in; half-out. That’s the SACP for you.

The Gupta family is the ultimate rhetorical get-out clause. Nzimande turned on the heat at the conference. "What state capture is doing, is corrupting our organisation," he said. "There is mutual dependency between these parasites and factions in our movements."

"It’s brazen, this state capture," he says. Sounds familiar.

If only he would turn that blowtorch onto Zuma with the same conviction.

Why is the SACP not a parasite? It attached itself to Zuma in exactly the same way the Guptas attached themselves to the state, only politically. It has sucked his blood for years. And Nzimande has had his own fangs deep into the main vein. But he was re-elected.

So many mistakes in South African politics. The SACP says its support for Zuma was a mistake. Julius Malema says he mistreated Thabo Mbeki. The ANC veterans, who can’t really articulate their rationale, seem at least to agree something has gone horribly wrong. But these are the people who now stand tall, telling us what the future should look like. And Blade Nzimande, far from offering a resignation for the pain he has inflicted, now has the gall to try to behave like a moral beacon and vestige of sound judgment.

There are many similarities between the SACP and the Gupta family. Likewise, there are many between Nzimande and Zuma. Of them all, the abiding one is a profound lack of personal responsibility and an ego so big he believes he can be both the problem and the solution.

Dante wrote, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." If you do ever visit purgatory, there you will find the SACP, no doubt bewildered that anyone ever took their particular brand of cowardly compromise as anything other than bold conviction.

The truth is, Blade Nzimande is a failed leader. He held SA hostage to a demagogic agenda, he failed to counter the forces of self-interest inside the alliance, and he refuses to take on the problem to this day. But he was re-elected. That tells you everything you need to know: the SACP is captured too — by indecision — and it will be its ultimate demise.