1 April 2008
The SACP is flabbergasted and often confounded by some of the utterances, including the latest ones by Prof Barney Pityana, on developments within our movement in particular and our country in general.
We wish to state that Prof Pityana has every right to express his opinions on any matter of importance in our movement and society in general, and, as a matter of course, the SACP welcomes robust debates and engagements. What we would however like to take issue with are especially some of his comments recently made at the University of Stellenbosch. We strongly reject attempts by Pityana to try and be the spokesperson for us as South Africans, and project his own views and anxieties as representing the views of people in our broad movement and society as a whole.
In especially the run up to, and immediately after, the ANC Polokwane Conference we have noticed a rather disturbing tendency wherein a whole range of commentators have tried to speak on our behalf, both as members of the ANC and the Alliance, on what Polokwane means to us. In particular we have noted a tendency from elements within the Black Consciousness Movement, the middle classes and the media trying to ingratiate themselves, for reasons best known to themselves, with certain leading personalities in the ANC and our alliance.
Now that for some of them the outcomes of Polokwane and developments within the Alliance thereafter are not in their favour, the world seems to have collapsed on them. That the world has collapsed on them because of the Polokwane outcomes does not mean that the membership of our Alliance and the overwhelming majority of the workers and the poor of our country share this sentiment. Therefore Pityana must stop projecting his own idiosyncratic anxieties on to the rest of us. We have no such anxieties about Polokwane and the new leadership of the ANC.
For the SACP Polokwane, the policies adopted there, and the newly elected leadership has given renewed hope to the overwhelming majority of our members, a feeling shared by the majority of the workers and the poor in our country, and indeed by millions of our people.
Whilst Pityana is entitled to his views, a person of his position needs to be cautious on how he positions himself in relation to developments within our broad movement. As we had said in relation to Mathata Tsedu, people occupying positions of trust in society, who are supposed to act in a manner that is above reproach, must desist from factionalist interventions in our organizations.
Issued by the SACP.
Contact:
Malesela Maleka
SACP Spokesperson – 082 226 1802