BY STAFF WRITER JUNE 17 2016, 11:12
Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande. Picture: GCIS
THE ANC needs a more inclusive process of finding a successor to President Jacob Zuma, without damaging the party, South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Friday.
Nzimande, who was speaking in an interview with Eyewitness News (EWN), said factionalism was tearing the governing party apart and was having a negative effect on the tripartite alliance.
He said there were political parties in other parts of the world that had found an internal mechanism to deal with succession.
"We think the ANC hasn't found it, other than to say well we'll do things democratically, but in the process factions and some people are positioning themselves as kingmakers and it's tearing the organisation apart and it's affecting the alliance very negatively.
"We think it is time as the SACP for all of us in the alliance to say: ‘Can we not find a better way to manage this thing.'"
Nzimande said that 10 years ago the party was facing a problem with transition and leadership and once again found itself facing the same problem. Each time the succession "battle" had led to the formation of breakaway parties such as Congress of the People (COPE) and the EFF.
"For how long will the ANC, or us as a movement, afford these breakaways?
"How do we know that the next time around it won't be a breakaway but it may be an implosion of the organisation. We all have to sober up we have a lot to lose in this factionalism," Nzimande said.
He said while he could not compare the SACP with the ANC, because the communist party did not run a country, he used his party as an example, recalling how it had not "elected" leaders at its past two conferences but rather reached a consensus.
"The ANC has reached a consensus with the enemy before, during negotiations ... let's try and see if we can't do that for the sake of the future of this country and for the sake of our movement."