[PEN-L:9390] Tensions rising within ANC

[D Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>]

The Globe and Mail 				Saturday, April 5, 1997


ALLIES ACCUSE ANC OF CHANGING STANCE:
COMMUNIST LEADERS ATTACK STRATEGY PAPER

	By Hein Marais

	Special to The Globe and Mail

JOHANNESBURG -- Crucial allies of President Nelson Mandela's African
National Congress have launched a stinging public attack against the party
for what they call "opportunism" and a "slide into a technocratic, 'class-
neutral' approach to politics."
        The attack came from two leaders of the South African Communist
Party, Blade Nzimande and Jeremy Cronin.  They argued that a recent ANC
strategy document "can only ... legitimize and entrench ... inequalities."
The document was published this week in the party's journal, The African
Communist.
        The ANC and SACP have been joined in an intimate alliance since the
1950s.  Several SACP members are ministers in the ANC cabinet.  Mr.
Nzimande is deputy chairman and Mr. Cronin is deputy secretary-general
of the Communist Party, which says it has more that 75,000 members.
Both also sit on the ANC's powerful National Executive Committee.
        The ANC has tried to play down the affair.  But it is highly unusual
for the SACP to attack ANC thinking publicly.  Usually, disagreements are
debated in private.
        Observers say the broadside by the two Communist leaders is an
attempt to draw battle lines in a bid to contain the growing influence of
conservatives in the ANC.
        The ANC strategy document, Mr. Cronin said, was "the first attempt
to theorize" about a conservative line within the party.
        "I welcome its existence," he said.  "There's nothing worse than
dealing with an animal whose footprints you can see but which itself
remains invisible."  According to political analyst Tom Lodge, the attack on
the ANC is long overdue.  "There's a broad anger at the extent to which
some sections of the ANC have, indeed, sold out," said Mr. Lodge, who
lectures at Witwatersrand University.
        The ANC document is titled The State and Social Transformations.  It
was released late last year as a discussion paper, mainly on economic
policy, but has yet to be discussed within the party.
        It acknowledges that the costs of servicing South Africa's debt will
mean that less money is available for such services as education, health care
and housing, and that it could also mean increases in interest rates and
inflation.  South Africa, it says, cannot isolate itself from the profit-oriented
economy.
        Recognizing that the realities it describes will cost the poor, mainly
black population more that anyone else, the document asks working people
not to be "infantile" in their response to South Africa's economic realities.
Nowhere, critics complain, does it propose an equal burden on the business
community to make sacrifices in the national interest.
        Mr. Cronin insisted that the essay criticizing the ANC document is not
aimed at "some huge showdown.  It's directed at a trend in the ANC, at a
powerful tendency in it," he said.
        Privately, however, some SACP sources are worried that the essay
could be construed as a personal assault on deputy president Thabo Mbeki,
who is expected to be elected ANC leader in December.  In recent months,
Mr. Mandela has ceded much of the running of government to Mr. Mbeki.
        "I'm really afraid that Mbeki might react by just pushing us aside," an
SACP official said.
        Media reports have identified Mr. Mbeki as the author of the ANC
document.
        "Mbeki might not have written every word, but the ANC document
clearly reflects his thinking," Mr. Lodge said.
        Neither the strategy document nor the responding essay has been
officially endorsed by either the ANC of SACP.
        In their essay, Mr. Nzimande and Mr. Cronin accuse the ANC
document of portraying the government as little more that a mediation
service between labour and business.
        Relations between the ANC and its alliance partners have grown tense
in recent months, notably over the government's conservative growth,
employment and redistribution plan, unveiled last June.