MATHATHA TSEDU

There was a time when the South African Communist Party was seen as the intellectual hub of its tripartite alliance with the ANC and Cosatu.

People like former SACP secretary-general Joe Slovo were seen as the strategic brains behind many ANC decisions. Their influence, particularly in exile, was strengthened by the fact that the then Soviet Union was a major benefactor of the liberation struggle.

For example, Slovo is credited with the sunset clause during the Codesa negotiations that gave the National Party the comfort to sign for the transfer of power to the ANC through the 1994 elections. You didn’t have to agree with the clause, because indeed it sucked, as it protected white state bureaucrats’ jobs, but if you believed in those negotiations, as the ANC and SACP did, the move to unlock that deadlock was a masterstroke.

It meant thinking ahead and looking for the half-full glass and half a loaf instead of scuppering the process. It also meant thinking deeply beyond the easy populist slogans and instead choosing the hard-to-explain path that was, nevertheless, a decision that would, in their view, be in the national interest.

Codesa not only gave us the sunset clause; it gave us a land policy and economic system that legalised the perpetual dispossession of black people of their land and a capitalist-based economy that ensured blacks remained perpetual slave workers. The SACP agreed to this and went into government to enforce it. And the SACP remains there.

Fast forward to the Phala Phala saga and the Constitutional Court ruling that ordered parliament to reopen the impeachment process that had been rejected by an ANC majority in parliament in 2022.

You don’t have to like Ramaphosa or believe that he should stay; you just have to think a little deeper about what his immediate departure would mean for the country and state

That decision on its own had nothing technically to do with President Cyril Ramaphosa. It said parliament erred and should fix its mistake. However, politically, a valid moral argument could be made about the perception that the president is seen as compromised by the mere finding of the judge Sandile Ngcobo panel that there “could” be prima facie evidence of wrongdoing.

In that case a morally upright leader might leave office. Ramaphosa chose not to. Our country is led administratively by the ANC and its coalition partners, but real decisions are taken by business, which directs that its interests should always be protected. They donate money to parties to fund their campaigns, and even form and finance some parties that eat away at the black vote while bolstering the white parties — in the interests of capital protection.

What would have happened had Ramaphosa resigned? Why is a divided ANC standing solidly behind the man? Because even the dumbest of their leaders realises that the shaky coalition and its ecosystem would collapse. And with that collapse, the entire SA Incorporated experiment would go with it.

The ANC does not, at the moment, have an alternative to Ramaphosa to steer this boat through the perpetually troubled waters of coalition politics and the international geopolitical headwinds led by Israel through Washington DC. To keep this system going, he has to stay put while they try to find a solution.

So he goes for judicial review, hoping that the ANC might in the meantime prepare for the outcome. The SACP knows all this. However, because they now have a fight with the Ramaphosa-led ANC leadership, they argue for a populist position shared by even more populist partners such as the MK Party and the EFF.

The irony of both an MKP led by a serial abuser of court appeal processes and an EFF leader who has vowed to use all legal avenues to stay out of jail arguing against Ramaphosa’s right to use legal means to test the report seems to escape the SACP as it calls on Ramaphosa to go NOW.

You don’t have to like Ramaphosa or believe that he should stay; you just have to think a little deeper about what his immediate departure would mean for the country and state. The MKP, finding itself marginalised out of the only big story in town this week, chose the old EFF chaos page in parliament to insert itself into the headlines.

The EFF, fearing being outmanoeuvred from its own story, decided to join, reversing the promise of altered “behaviour” they made post the disastrous 2024 election outcome. Throw into this scenario the disturbing optics of the national commissioner of police sitting behind Cat Matlala as a co-accused, and you have to be worried about us as a nation.

One would expect an SACP steeped in deep intellectual analysis to step into this conundrum in a way that helps hold the state together as they try their hand at elections. The socialist state they wish to create must find a state in existence, a state they can then change. That they seem to have chosen populism over what, at least to me, seems obvious, is very disappointing.