Nzimande calls Numsa to order
SA Communist Party secretary general Blade Nzimande has lambasted the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa for "interfering" in the affairs of the party.
Nzimande effectively told Numsa to mind its own business. His remarks seemed to have been sparked by Numsa's criticism of the SACP decision to amend party rules that required Nzimande and other SACP leaders to serve on a full-time basis in the party.
The amendment enabled Nzimande to serve as higher education and training minister.
Speaking during the opening of the Numsa elective congress yesterday, Nzimande accused the union of causing divisions.
"We are upset as SACP, that when we took a decision of cadre deployment to government, some within Numsa went to the media and shouted against such decisions," Nzimande said.
Numsa, he said, should not have gone to the media.
"We have taken decisions of deployment and we don't expect Numsa to debate this outside."
He said the relationship between the two groups had been strained and warned that if they did not reconcile neither would exist. He described as "daydreaming" those from both parties who thought they could "liquidate" each other.
"I need to make it clear comrades that decisions of Numsa are yours and they must be respected as such, whether the SACP likes them or not. If we have issues with your decisions we will at all times raise them internally with you and not through bourgeois media and in public platforms. As the SACP we cannot behave as if we are custodians of Numsa's internal organisational decisions."
SACP decisions, he said, should also be respected.
"The question of deployment of SACP cadres [in government] is a matter for the SACP alone. If we do not respect these protocols, then we run the risk not only of damaging relations between our two formations, but of causing discord within the working class as a whole," Nzimande said.
Unity of the alliance should take into account the importance of independence of alliance components, he said.
"Building the unity of our alliance does not mean that each of the alliance components must sacrifice its independence."
Nzimande also seemed to differ with Numsa's recent call for nationalisation, although he directed his criticism at the ANC Youth League, which had called for the same.
He said the SACP did not support the call by the ANCYL for nationalisation of mines because it was made to rescue those "struggling BEE within the mining sector".
But Numsa president Cedric Gina insisted on the need for radical changes to the economic policies pursued since 1994.
"President [Jacob] Zuma needs to understand that in order for the ANC to continue to lead the economic transformation, the commitment to the economic freedom in our lifetime needs to be enforced differently from what has been happening since 1994."