SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila says he has long warned that President Cyril Ramaphosa, whom he described as scandal contaminated, is not fit to lead the ANC’s much talked about renewal project.
Mapaila told Sunday World Engage that the Phala Phala panel report, which found prima facie evidence on the part of Ramaphosa to answer for the theft of dollars at his Limpopo farm, raised serious questions on the integrity of the president.
In his view, the SACP remains in the alliance for strategic reasons and the need to protect the ANC from being surrendered totally to the tentacles of imperialism and neo-liberalism.
“The ANC elects its own leaders and so forth, therefore in my criticism in 2022, which was that the inability for any of the contending leaders to be the symbol of renewal was shocking. I even spoke about the current president at that time. For instance, there was a parliamentary report on Phala Phala. I asked if this president could represent any sense of renewal and I said, ‘it’s not possible because he is heavily contaminated by scandals’,” said Mapaila.
“For a leader to lead a renewal project of a movement, that is ethical, value system-based, [has] moral, and has integrity, you need a different kind of leader.
“But, at that time, for instance, I was even told to keep quiet because I was supporting [Jacob] Zuma’s forces, which I was not necessarily supporting but these are the realities of what was happening.”
Mapaila said Ramaphosa must disassociate himself from the “reactionary forces” that are led by the DA and become the president loyal to the national democratic revolution (NDR)
espoused by the mass democratic movement.
“We need a president of the ANC who can lead the NDR, and its key pillars is anti-imperialism, anti-oppression, anti-poverty and about the economic wellbeing of the people. We cannot have the captain of the ship controlled by foreign agents and imperialist forces in terms of directing our economy,” he said.
Mapaila, a passionate critic of the government of national unity (GNU), which he believes is a “neo-liberal coalition government”, said Ramaphosa was no exception because all ANC leaders who were contesting at Nasrec were questionable.
“None of them had committed to a distinct project of the renewal of the movement. They were talking about it in general terms. They did not get into the nitty gritties of what the renewal of the movement means.”
Mapaila said the cohort of current ANC top brass was shocking in its subversion of the long-standing call for the reconfiguration of the alliance.
Instead, he charged, the ANC was swift to get into bed with the DA, having been manipulatively postponing the reconfiguration of the alliance, which would see them having more say in the ANC’s deployment processes, among others.
Mapaila said the debate on the reconfiguration of the alliance, which started in Polokwane conference in 2007, was settled and concluded in 2019.
The guiding document was signed off by all highest decision-making bodies of the alliance, including the ANC national executive committee, central executive committee of Cosatu, central committee of the SACP and the NEC of Sanco.
“This document was pushed aside by the so-called intellectuals of the ANC, the new ones, who drafted a new document. This document attacks this
other [first] document agreed upon in 2019, as if it’s an SACP document,” he complained.
