[DEBATE] : Business Day letter from Raymond Suttner

[Ran Greenstein]

Posted to the web on: 26 April 2006 
Business Day 
What is left?  

I have been a South African Communist Party (SACP) member for over 35  
years and formerly in its leadership. I am disturbed by the approach provided  
in the Jacob Zuma saga. Long before the current rape trial we had the  
projection of Zuma as a “left wing” alternative to Thabo Mbeki. Historically  
the SACP has played a role in resolving disputes, mediating and dampening  
internal conflict. 

When Zuma sang of machine guns, by walking by his side SACP leaders  
helped inflame passions. Burning the president’s image is an attack not only  
on a person but on the office that he holds. One would have hoped to see the  
SACP talking to those misguidededly involved in these actions. 

General secretary Nzimande will not comment on evidence in the rape trial  
because he respects the sub judice rule. But sub judice does not preclude  
commenting on the mode of defence conducted by Zuma. Party silence  
condones the battering of the complainant, the no-holds barred methods of  
cross-examination of acts of abuse, euphemistically called sexual history. In  
the 1990s the SACP once spoke of itself as a feminist party. It can no longer  
make such a claim. 

The SACP has remained silent while Zuma and his supporters have promoted  
sexist, abusive and ethno-chauvinist conduct. No one denies that Zuma is  
innocent until proven guilty, but there are ways of conducting a defence that  
ought to be repugnant to a party characterised historically by humanism and  
more recently by non-sexism. 

The African National Congress (ANC) is in crisis. The Congress of South  
African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and SACP are not playing a morally  
defensible role. We are watching a party which produced giants like Kotane,  
First, Fischer, Marks, Hani and others, descend into one without moral  
backbone. 

Many feel deeply disappointed at this failure of the SACP and hope that some  
form of renewal can be undergone in order to re-establish it as an exemplary  
ethical force. 

Raymond Suttner 
Johannesburg 

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Ran Greenstein
Johannesburg, South Africa